


Ouroboros

by dragonofdispair



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Legend of the Five Rings
Genre: Crossover, Cussing, Gen, Headcanon, Multiple Crossovers, NPC Deaths, Offscreen NPC Deaths, Planeswalking, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 22,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2665814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning of all the best stories, everyone meets in a tavern. Theodore Kurita, Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, gets a different ending, or possibly a new beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. World Serpent 01

Theodore Kurita, once-Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, now simple bar patron, was waiting. This made him somewhat unique. Most patrons of the World Serpent Inn were travelling, trapped or trying to get home, not waiting. He didn't know how long he'd been waiting. His appearance hadn't changed since he'd come here. His hair had not grown from its short, almost military cut, and no lines on his face had either grown or shrunk. He was an old man, but was getting neither older nor younger. If he weren't waiting, he might have traded in his silk, red and black kimono for something a bit more practical, but he wanted to be recognized when he was found and the black dragon did managed to stand out like a neon sign, even in this crowd.

He rarely left the taproom, except to go to his room upstairs (always the fifth door on the right, no matter how many other patrons also seemed to use that room) to sleep. It looked like a truly ancient tavern, with its wooden floors and thick rafters. The air always smelled like wood smoke and grease and people drinking. Though the eternal haze that always obscured the far walls of the chamber made seeing both at the same time impossible, he knew there were two flagstone fireplaces and the space between was filled with tables and chairs, at which literally anything, from angels to elementals and everything in between, could be sitting. Brawls were common, deaths uncommon. Eventually he'd chosen a table near the door as his "regular" table, though with no weapon and no armor, he did not fight over something as insignificant as a specific chair. He had not yet been curious enough to go into the back rooms. He'd been warned a lifetime ago that they were dangerous and he dreaded the day boredom drove him back there. It was a strange sort of afterlife, if afterlife it was. Since he didn't remember getting here, he couldn't truly be sure.

When the warrior-of-Nova-Cat-but-only-for-now, Acize NovaCat – Cobweb – had spoken of immortality, Theodore hadn't believed her. Not just because such a thing was impossible, but also because her story wasn't right. Stories of humans and immortality always had emphasized grief as the primary insanity-inducing condition of eternity. She had mentioned grief, but only in passing. For her, the search for entertainment had been more significant and because of this, he hadn't believed her to be speaking truthfully. He regretted dismissing her now.

He'd spent his time in grief, of course. The loss of his life, his family, his world had moved him to both tears and rage in turns. But eventually grief dulled and passed, while timelessness constantly ate away at his psyche.

At the World Serpent Inn time did not truly pass. Everyone within its coils was immortal. He ate when he was hungry; drank when thirsty; slept when tired… and as "time" went on, devoid of the daily markers of sun or moon or even the experience of watching his own hair grow, he found himself less and less connected to time. How long did he sleep? Minutes? Hours? Until he woke was all he knew. How long had it been since he last ate? Not long enough that he was hungry again…

He was unexpectedly glad the World Serpent Inn held so much that was alien to his experiences. After he'd finished freaking out over the *things* that called this place their temporary home (that floating eyeball with the tentacles had been especially disconcerting and there were far too many Cthuluesque things that passed through for true comfort), learning new things motivated him to get up each "morning". Ordering new foods was what reminded him to eat. He didn't know how "long" he'd been here before he'd ordered Klingon gagh. He knew he'd been here long enough that he'd ordered it a second time.

By the time he saw her again, he'd stopped looking.

The alien band members of the Grand Imperial Quartet played their version of  _Shake that Wampa Down_  again, while Theodore was (embarrassingly) losing a game of Go to a white horse. The horse's rider-in-white and some sort of cat-rabbit thing with big eyes, bigger ears and brown fur watched and heckled. He just glanced up to see her staring up at him from her three-feet-at-most height, looking both so similar and so different from when he'd last seen her. Her dark grayish, almost fur-like hair hadn't changed, but she'd traded her Nova Cats pilot's uniform for a leather breastplate, military cargo pants, and animal-skull shield. Her rank pins – a Star Captain's – glimmered from the collar of her Indiana Jones style duster coat, matching her fedora, like always. She'd never visibly carried a weapon, and still didn't.

He wondered how he'd ever thought her human, as he looked into yellow, cat-slitted eyes darkened to gold with recent grief.

"How long?" he asked.

She snorted and sat at his table. The horse and rider, and rabbit thing left. "For you? No way to tell... For me? Twenty-two years. Crazy-assed Clanners attacking Irece. I crashed my fighter into the honorless freebirth who killed him, but... I cannot heal a PPC shot. You have a couple hundred grandchildren by now, quiaff?"

Grief surged, crashed, then faded. He'd grieved long ago and even recent news of his son's death couldn't revive it with any strength.

Interest was longer lasting.

"Tell me," he requested.

She signaled Mitchifer, ordered a White Russian (catnip infused vodka, hold the Kahlua) and yakisoba with mouse meat. Theodore's jumjum cider was refilled as her food and drink came. Then she leaned over the abandoned Go board and began, "After you had your stroke on Dieron, the Word of Blake ..."

tbc


	2. World Serpent 02

This place really was a book-fiend's heaven.

Right now ("now" being the only measurement of time that mattered), Theodore was reading a treatise on the seafood agriculture of some city-state he'd never heard of. Since the book had an entire hundred and fifty pages dedicated to the magics used to attract shellfish to their moors, and another twenty pages on the weight capacities of flying fishing ships, he supposed there wasn't a reason for him to have heard of it anyway.

It had been retrieved from one of the back rooms, beyond the fifth door on the right that was everyone's sleeping room. Stashing hoards of treasure back there was a common, if risky, prospect, so the occasional "expedition" was launched to see what could be retrieved. The latest one had come back with internal injuries, a couple of chewed-on limbs, and as many books at the surviving two humans, half orc and gnome could carry. Including this one.

A dry, technical treatise like this on the aquaculture of a world would have bored him to complete and utter tears as Coordinator, but somehow the magic involved made it more interes-

"Here."

Theodore looked up. Cobweb stood on the chair across from him holding a sheathed sword across her palms, presenting it to him. Slowly, he took it.

What had looked to be a full-sized katana in her hands was clearly a wakazashi in his. Its weight was familiar in his hands. He ran his fingers over the sheath and hilt, which had been wrapped in white for a funeral. He drew it part way, careful not to expose the whole blade to examine it as well. The blade was obviously sharp and well-forged – a blade forged for battle - and the dragon of the Draconis Combine was etched onto it, just above the hilt. He knew this blade, as intimately as he'd once known his own wife. "How…?"

Cobweb smiled, showing only a hint of fang. "Minoru saw that your spirit would still have need of it, so Hohiro-sama left it in your tomb for you." How it then came into her possession was something she obviously wasn't going to elaborate on.

Theodore knew better than to ask.

Instead he stood and bowed formally. "I am in your debt, Cobweb-san."

"Time pays all debts," she responded casually. "Today I deliver a message. Tomorrow…" she shrugged. "Honor your past, Theodore. Don't lose it."

His past or his blade? Theodore suspected she referred to both. She still wore her Nova Cat rank pins. How many other mementos of pasts otherwise lost to her did she carry? He didn't know. He probably never would. "Thank you," he said again.

She just sprawled into the chair she'd been standing in and raised the glass of cider-and-sweet-cream Mitchifer had just delivered in a sort of toast and drank.

He repeated the gesture, though he had no idea what they were toasting.

.

tbc...


	3. World Serpent 03

Eternity was turning Theodore into a philosopher.

The World Serpent Inn never truly changed. Things  **about**  the Inn changed. Patrons came and went, changing the demographics. Some "days" fiends filled the tables, hatching diabolic plots that made Theodore uneasy while he listened, or brawling in imitations of their petty wars. Other times, creatures known as Illithids and Githyanki and weirder things filled the air with tension so thick it could be cut with a knife. Then a regiment of Elemental-esque Space Marines would wander in, filling the room with humans, and the entire place would erupt into a battlefield. And underneath it all, the serious business of drinking, traveling, trading and storytelling was a constant, unchanging hum of activity.

But the taproom itself never changed. Mitchifer never changed. The snakes of his hair and beard may never sit in the same positions twice, but his smile was unwavering as he served food and drinks to regulars, longtime benchwarmers, impatient travelers and newcomers alike.

Perhaps it was the timelessness of the place. Change took time, and time was something the World Serpent didn't truly have. He thought-

"How long are you going to sit in here and mope?" How she managed to enter the same fifth room to the right as him, when no matter how many times he tried he never managed to enter anyone's room but his own was a mystery.

"Pardon?" He wasn't moping. He was… meditating.

"You heard me," she almost snapped. "I know this place can have a… depressive effect on some people, especially those who feel they have no place else to go. There is a reason I only stay here long enough to tell and hear the latest round of stories, but I thought the Coordinator of the fracking Draconis Combine was made of sterner stuff."

Theodore stood, towering over the former NovaCat, nearly snarling. "And where would you suggest I go?" He looked away. "Even if I managed to return to my world – and I've seen enough people fail at  **that**  to know the futility of trying – my life there is gone. There's no point."

He looked up to see her openly mocking him with a hand puppet, waving its hands around in mocking imitation of him in a rant. He growled and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his wakazashi. She only raised an eyebrow daringly at him. "You are just scared," she stated when it became obvious he wasn't going to draw steel on her. "Poor Theodore," she cooed to the puppet, "lost everything he knows. His world, his house, his wife, his dog, his truck… he sounds like a bad country song, quiaff." She hummed a few twangy notes of music and the puppet nodded enthusiastically. "Unless he has the truck stashed under his kimono, quineg?" The puppet gestured as though checking its own sleeves, and then rudely mooned Theodore, showing off its cloth butt, checking under its tunic. "He will just sit here and let himself rot away in the Serpent's coils, quiaff?" The puppet waved its arms in agreement.

"Stop that," he growled, itching to pull his sword. Only the fact that he'd never seen her carry a weapon herself stopped him. It would be dishonorable.

She grinned, showing long canine teeth. "Make me." And she flounced out.

Still seething with the insults she'd so casually heaped on him, he packed the remains of his latest meal in a bag and stalked to the front door of the taproom, ignoring the catcalls of several other patrons. He flung open the heavy wooden door as though it were as light as a feather. The blast of frigid air made him hesitate slightly, but the anger at being mocked warmed him and he stepped through.

.

tbc...


	4. Rokugan 01

Standing in a foot of snow, watching the sun set and the moon rise behind ragged clouds, the hems of his kimono already soaking through, Theodore regretted his hasty actions. He looked back, hoping the door to the World Serpent Inn had not yet closed, but it had, replaced by the door of a crumbling shack. Just to be sure, he reached through where the door should have been, in case it was only hidden from this side, but only accomplished knocking the door out of it's rotted frame. Obviously, if he wished to return to the safety of the Inn's chaotic doldrums, he won't going to find the door here.

He gave the snow a disgusted look and went into the shack. The floor was cold, but dry, though much of the reed roof was gone, so he removed the long outer kimono, the longest one, red and black dragon prominent across the front and back, and silently thanked his sons for burying him in mechwarrior's boots, rather than tabi as would have been traditional.

For the first time since he'd woken in the taproom of the World Serpent, he was truly tired, as though simply walking out the door into something that was real had taken all his strength. He knew better than to sleep in the freezing cold. It would be too easy to never wake, freezing to death while unaware it was happening, so he paced instead. Hopefully night in this place was short, the sun would rise soon and he could find his way to a road or other sign of civilization.

He didn't notice the other until the clouds shifted and moonlight shone into the deepest corners, reflecting back and making the eyes of the other shine white. Theodore grasped the hilt of his wakazashi and strained to see what sort of beast he'd invaded the lair of. The moon was hesitant to reveal more than the eyes, but he discerned the edge of a large round ear, the streaks of long whiskers, the gleam of a long knife… a knife meant it could be sentient and his time in the Inn had taught him not to judge even the hearts of demons by their fearsome looks.

"I apologize most profusely," he said in his most humble Japanese, "for intruding."

The whiskers twitched and the and the creature moved fully into the light. Rat features adorned with white fur, each strand fading to red at the end, stared back at him. A tattered kimono that may have once been blue or purple but was now a faded bluish-grey hung over its lean body. It moved on its black furred hind legs, like a human, but hunched as though it could move onto all fours at any moment. Theodore estimated that if it stood up completely, it would be only a foot or two shorter than he was. Still he did not draw his sword - tools, kimono… he wanted to see if it would accept his apology before acting rashly.

The whiskers twitched again. "Why no-hair speak-speak like Nezumi great-great samurai?" The creature's voice was, Theodore thought, exactly as one might imagine a rat's to be - high pitched, squeaky and sharp - but its japanese was good, if overly familiar for a first meeting, though it obviously understood them. Perhaps its mouth could not easily shape the more complex sounds of distant or formal styled speech? "A'Timitr'D'n'Kir only brave-warrior-who-remembers. No-hair do not speak-speak with respect to ratlings."

"Then the no-hairs have done your people a great disservice," Theodore responded, continuing his formal speech. He was not so removed from his life as Coordinator that he did not understand why humans might be perturbed by a race of giant rats, but he had rarely found that anything good came from unthinking xenophobia. Not in his life, and not in the Inn. Perhaps the "no-hairs" of this place had good reason, but perhaps not. Until the creature proved itself worthy of scorn, he would be polite. "I am very pleased to meet you." He bowed.

The Nezumi copied the gesture. "My Name is A'Timitr'D'n'Kir. It is a strong name, build-built on Strong-Warrior-Name of Yesterday."

The creature's concern for its name seem ritualistic, and he decided to respond in kind. "My name is Kurita Theodore. Theodore is the name I chose at my genpukku, and has belonged to a great many persons of renown in my lands."

"Good Name," it sniffed the air between them. "Yesterday it was a Great Name. But you leave, like Nameless One so only good-good Name." Theodore felt a pang of grief, but not regret. The dead did not choose to leave their nations and families. A'Timitr'D'n'Kir sniffed the air again. "You smell of places far-far from here. Dream places." It blinked and sniffed again. "Tomorrow N-Kich'Kir - a Self-Deciever - will follow you in dream places. Good Name will not protect Kurita Theodore. Seek-seek a Perfect Name."

A lifetime ago he'd rejected his father's belief in mysticism; a timeless limbo in the World Serpent had taught him a respect for magic that did not exist in his home worlds. So he thanked A'Timitr'D'n'Kir for his prophecy and his advice, and after a moment he offered it the money-clip his sons had used to secure a thousand ryuu worth of crisp bills to his burial kimono. The money his sons had intended for him to use to pay for the toll across the River of the Three Hells had long ago been given to Mitchifer to pay for sake, beer and other, more exotic drinks (a toll of sorts, given the World Serpent had carried him across the first leg of his afterlife), but he'd still had the clip.

A'Timitr'D'n'Kir took the etched piece of gold and examined it, running its clawed fingers over the embossed chrysanthemum and sniffing the metal. Its ears twitched and it tucked it into the tattered kimono. Then it untied the equally tattered obi and handed it to Theodore. It was silk, he could feel, and had once been heavily embroidered with flowers and birds, though much of the stitching had come out.

"I have your scent," the Nezumi said, "and you have mine. I will remember your scent."

"And I will remember you," said Theodore.

And without a farewell, A'Timitr'D'n'Kir dropped to all fours and scurried out into the night.

.

tbc...


	5. Rokugan 02

To his relief, the snow started to melt by mid morning. Though it left behind mud that clung to his boots and soaked his kimono through with disgusting splatters, that was offset by the promise of a  _warm_  autumn day. He considered himself lucky to have found a game trail - or was it a Nezumi path? - that led to a dirt track Theodore sincerely hoped wasn't actually what passed as a road on this world. It was in worse repair than the roads of the poorest Combine worlds.

Pessimistically he predicted it to be a local highway.

In an effort to not sink into the muddy ruts up to his knees, he stuck to the piles of fallen leaves along the side of this cart trail.

Being his father's heir had had no exempted him from the tender mercies of the DCMS drill instructors during training. Quite the opposite - said instructors had taken sadistic delight in putting him through twice as much hell as his classmates, especially when it had come to wilderness survival on strange planets.

The alien birds warned him, going silent enough for him to hear the high, raucous laughter and the sounds of a street brawl, before the glossy black feathered Snow Raven-like ones started calling in alarm. Not having been a young hothead, to rush into an unseen fight with unknown assailants, in decades, he loosened his wakazashi from its sheath before cautiously rounded the corner of the road.

Goblins. He was familiar with them from the Inn. They generally seemed to hate dogs with the sort of unthinking rage that caused brawls whenever a Mog or other dog-kin wandered in, and were practically guaranteed to trash even the World Serpent's sturdy architecture whenever a box of fireworks was recovered from the back rooms. They were dirty, disgusting and had the emotional maturity of an elementary school bully, but were pretty harmless. At least the ones in the Inn had been. These…

These were dark, twisted,  _evil_  versions of already distasteful creatures, wholly focussed on eating the unfortunate they'd brought down.

So focussed they didn't even notice Theodore's wakazashi slicing the first in half and didn't even retaliate until he was pulling the corpse of the second off. Then it was all shrill, obscene battle cries, bloody claws and spears, and desperately trying to defend himself from the horde of tiny assailants.

The Serpent, was his first thought once all the nasty things were dead or fleeing, had made him fat, lazy and clumsy. Acize had been right to provoke him into leaving.

His second was for the victim on the ground.

He knelt to examine the man and his injuries. Human, or a close facsimile, was his relieved observation. His first aid training was actually of use. He wouldn't have known where to start with an injured non-human. He ran his fingers over the man's head, feeling the knot there. Likely the reason he was unconscious. Concussion, maybe. Hopefully not a cracked skull or more serious injury. He didn't have the knowledge or the supplies to treat a head wound. He could do nothing but hope the man woke on his own.

Blood loss was his second concern. Methodically he bandaged the worst-bleeding of the man's wounds with strips torn from the blue-white travel kimono to keep him from bleeding out, then took stock of the traveling supplies the goblins had scattered across the road. Shock and possible infection were his next concerns.

Fortunately the man had been properly stocked to spend at least a few nights out-of-doors and Theodore wasted no time starting a fire and putting water on to boil. He didn't know how much an infection risk those dark goblins' bites and scratches were, and wanted to sterilize the rest of the bandages and both their wounds before bandaging and stitching them more tightly. There didn't seem to be any alcohol in the supplies, so boiling water would have to do.

_I think I'd kill for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a sheet of butterfly stitches and a tube of liquid band-aid._

Gods - stitches. He searched the pack again, while the water boiled. He found a fishing line - cotton; he'd have preferred nylon or even silk but cotton would have to do - but no needle.

Cursing goblins, the World Serpent, inconsiderate Nova Cats who didn't even give a man a chance to gather necessary supplies - like a proper first aid kit - before driving a body from a nice warm taproom, and himself for allowing her to goad him into leaving, he set himself to the task of straitening one of the two steel (thank the rusted kami they were steel) fish hooks.

.

His patient stirred as the sun was starting it's journey down to the west. Sixteen-hundred, planetary local time, assuming this place had something approximating Terra's twenty-four our day. He thought it did, but without a watch, the axial tilt caused season could be playing tricks on him.

Either way, they'd been camped here for six hours or so, when the man woke.

"Konbonwa," he greeted, moving to the man's side. He wanted to forestall any attempts to move, and be ready to hold him down if he woke struggling. He didn't seem combative, but better to be prepared than not. "Please don't move, or you might tear your stitches."

He relaxed, slightly, and Theodore let him, sitting back. "Tear my what?"

Theodore paused. Did the people here not know how to properly close deep wounds? Or was the word unfamiliar? Combine Standard Japanese had a lot of adopted terminology from pre-spaceflight English dialects.

Or was the possible concussion to blame?

"I've sewn the deepest of your wounds closed," he explained slowly, trying to stick with purely Japanese words his patient would recognize - not an easy feat; some of those adopted words had been part of the Japanese language for over a thousand years - and reached into the pack for the candle he'd seen earlier and lighting the wick from the campfire. "It will help them heal more quickly and with less scarring, but if you move too quickly you can tear the stitching and make the wound worse." He held up the candle and watched the man's pupils, then watched them track his finger from side to side. "I am most worried about the blow you took to the head. Can you tell me your name? What do you remember of the attack?"

"Help me sit," Theodore bristled at the blunt, commanding Japanese. Didn't he - no. He calmed himself enough to help. He definitely wouldn't recognize the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. Silently he forgave him his rudeness. For the moment. "I'm Junichiro. I remember…" his eyes went wide and he searched his surroundings, finally landing on the pile of corpses. Theodore hadn't been sure what to do with the goblins. The wood he could gather was wet enough that it'd been a challenge getting the campfire to stay lit; he didn't want to contemplate a cremation fire. So he'd piled them a short distance from camp to deal with later if needed. Thus far, no animals had come to scavenge the meat.

"Bakemono," Jinichiro whispered. "They ambushed me. Thou killed them."

"Yes."

Critically, Junichiro examined the bandaging on both their wounds. "This one supposes thou are owed gratitude for your actions," his Japanese sliding up to an exquisitely polite word choice, allowing the grudging admission to stand as the apology, then sliding down to a more neutral-polite style suitable for acquaintances, smoothing Theodore's ruffled linguistic feathers. "Did thou have to use my kimono for the bandages?"

Theodore barked out a laugh, startling his companion, who didn't understand the humor. "I only have the one, Junichiro-san. You have two." He settled into a matching neutral-polite wording. "My name is Kurita Theodore." He bowed shallowly. "Hajimemashite."

He came up from his bow just in time to see the faint sneer on the other's face. He raised his eyebrow silently asking if Junichiro was really going to make an issue of his rescuer's  _name_.

He was not. Instead he visibly swallowed whatever he'd been about to say, saying instead, "Douzo yoroshiku, Kurita Te-o-do-san."

Theodore winced at the mispronunciation. Fluency in Star League Standard was mandatory among the nobility and military of the Combine - even conscripts were forced to learn it during basic training. By the second year after his genpukku, he'd even stopped hearing it from commoners on newsvids. No one wanted to insult the Coordinator's heir - and it  _had_  become the fourth most popular name in the Combine for newborns. Only his father had continued for a while, giving up only after he'd found a better insult to heap on him. "Kurita's fine." He didn't want to hear it from this stranger. "Help me sort through your food for whatever you'd set aside for today. I can turn a couple of those rice balls into a porridge we can share."

Junichiro blinked, as though it had not occurred to him that a traveller would refrain from helping himself to his supplies, then nodded. With him telling him what was what, Theodore started cooking and setting up a more proper camp for the night. He noted, but otherwise ignored the sealed scroll. He'd seen it earlier, but hadn't opened it, and no amount of downplaying on Junichiro's part now would disguise its importance now.

The porridge resulting from his efforts, made from sticky rice, various pickled vegetables, and some dried mushrooms, wouldn't be especially tasty but - as he was reminded as his stomach growled - it had been over seventy-two hours since Michifer had last served him breakfast? lunch? whatever. And while elven Lembas bread was supposed to sustain a person for days, he'd spent much of that time wasted from the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster he'd ordered to go with it.

It also, he thought despairingly, was going to be only barely enough for two. He couldn't keep mooching off Junichiro's supplies. And as adventurous as boredom and depression had made him in the Tavern, now that he was someplace real, DCMS horror stories about survival on alien planets were making him leary of foraging and hunting. Until he had a sense of what was and wasn't edible - and how it needed to be cooked before becoming such - on this world, he was going to have to purchase food, as well as other supplies. A pot to boil nasty microbes out of the water was an absolute  _must_.

He cast his eyes back to the pile of bakemono corpses, now only barely visible in the flickering firelight. He grimaced, but another growl from his stomach had him burying his pride. The Coordinator of the Draconis Combine doing mercenary work. It was like being back in the Legions of Vega, before he'd gotten the unit to shape up and behave like part of an actual military.

"Kurita-san?"

He felt Junichiro's gaze on him and sighed in resignation. "There doesn't happen to be a bounty out on those things, does there?"

.

.

tbc…


	6. Rokugan 03

Forest suddenly gave way to rice fields, already turned over after the harvest was finished, several days later. Junichiro had been impatient, without elaborating on why - his message was obviously important - but Theodore had insisted on a slower pace. He did not like the way the cotton string pulled on the courier's stitches.

He also didn't like the low but persistent fever Junichiro'd developed, and conceded that they needed to keep moving , at least until they reached a town. He glared at the village he could now see barely beyond the rice patties. It would still take most of what remained of the day to get there.

A sudden familiar minty smell had him looking down in surprise. He was still sticking to the edges of the road to avoid the mud and hadn't noticed when he'd gone from tramping through fallen leaves to still-green foliage. For the most part, it was a normal, unremarkable assortment of unidentifiable (to him, at least) weeds, but what held his attention was a mint-like plant, about fifty centimeters tall with fuzzy, silvery green, knobby heart-shaped leaves and a single stalk full of stubborn whitish flowers.

"Junichiro," he called to the man slightly ahead of him. "Is this catnip?" A frustratingly familiar expression of confusion had Theodore cursing the local language as he searched his memory for the older term. Three quarters of the time he didn't even know a word was adopted (or an onomatopoeia, a modern compound, or technical jargon…) until Junichiro looked at him uncomprehending. "Mokutenryo?"

The confusion cleared. He examined the plant for himself. "Yes."

He would have left it at that, if Theodore hadn't started picking the fuzzy leaves. "Don't. It attracts Bakeneko. Bad luck."

Cat monsters? He supposed it would. As long as the Bakeneko in question weren't full-blooded Rakshasa, he'd deal with it. He rather hoped to attract the attention of a certain Nova Cat, if she passed this way.

"Yes," he watched the other man edge a centimeter away from him. "I hope to appease one who already follows me occasionally." It wasn't quite a lie. She'd been interested in him at the Inn and there was a chance she may have followed him. And it made Junichiro relax slightly as he finished stowing the leaves in the blue obi A'Timitr'D'n'Kir had given him. Then he spotted another familiar plant and pointed. 'Feverfew' he knew was an English word so he paused. "Natsushirogiku?" he tried experimentally.

"Yes," Junichiro was still obviously confused.

Theodore ignored him and harvested that plant all the way down to, but excluding, its root, carefully wrapping it in another fold of the blue obi. Miraculously, it too was still in bloom, daisy flowers stubbornly defying the season. It was either earlier in the year than the snow that first night had implied, or the microclimate right here must be warmer than it was seven meters closer to the forest.

When done, he gestured for them to continue to the village.

.

Fortunately Junichiro's budget for this trip accounted for staying at the inns along the way, and as long as Theodore was still tending his wounds, they could shared as they had shared a tent on the road. Not that Fujieda had a true inn, as such. One of the larger families sold food to the occasional traveller and rented one of the children's' rooms when needed.

Theodore would would have been, not happy, but satisfied with part of Junichiro's meal, as he had been on the road, but the innkeeper, a wrinkled old widow by the name of Mei, seemed convinced that Theodore meant her harm of some sort, and insisted on placating him with a meal.

"It is the way thou wears thy kimono," Junichiro explained as Theodore glared down at the meal of rice, miso and vegetables Mei couldn't afford to give away, and he couldn't afford to compensate her for. "It is incorrect to wear it with the right panel over the left. She thinks thou art a gaijin bandit," his tone of voice indicated this to be what he, personally believed, "or a spirit of some kind. That is the way the dead are dressed for a funeral."

"I am dead," Theodore informed him flatly, trying to shut down that line of conversation. Time in the Inn had dulled the pain, but it still wasn't something he wanted to talk about.

Unsettled, Junichiro simply returned to eating.

After their meal, he convinced the courier to purchase go purchase a bottle of alcohol. It took some convincing, as he seemed disdainful of the stuff, and lingering nervousness from their conversation made him argumentative. "Sake or shochu," he insisted when the other man finally agreed. Beer wouldn't be strong enough. He struggled to explain the concepts of greater than twelve percent alcohol by volume and filtered until clear and settled for, "as strong as possible and clear, like water," while he went to Mei-san's kitchen to boil water and insist on at least washing the dishes.

.

Junichiro watched in fascination as Theodore unwrapped, sterilized with the clear shochu, and rewrapped each wound with freshly boiled bandages torn from the remains of the kimono he'd first cannibalized. Earlier, he'd eaten some of the feverfew to be absolutely certain it was what he'd thought it to be, and short a full lab test it seemed to be, so he coaxed the courier to eat three of the bitter leaves.

"Thank you, Kurita-isha," he said, more polite than he'd been thus far.

Theodore didn't argue the semantics of 'Doctor' vs 'barely trained in first aid with a random assortment of knowledge gleaned from his father's herbalist', and politely refused to accept the gratitude. While Junichiro rested, he cleaned the mess he'd made. The used bandages he burned. The left over shochu he packed with about half of the feverfew leaves to preserve the herb and make a (probably weak) tincture. The rest he rewrapped in the blue obi, hoping to keep them fresh for a few days to treat Junichiro's fever.

Right before dousing the light, he laid one of the catnip leaves on the windowsill, just in case.

.

"So where are we going?" he asked the next morning.

"Why does thou wish to know?" came the suspicious response. Junichiro was still calling him 'Kurita-isha', but his newfound respect did not seem to dent his inherent (overblown) caution of strangers with unpronounceable names. (Both of them avoided the topic of Theodore's kimono, and the revelation about it, to the point that the courier seemed to have outright forgotten it. Theodore wasn't sure if he should be relieved or disturbed.)

He'd been hoping to get a sense of where he was and where they were going, rather than just wander this world randomly in search of the door back to the World Serpent, but that wasn't something he thought he should tell his companion. "I need to stay with you at least another two days - possibly another seven - until your stitches can come out. I also need to keep an eye on your fever." He contemplated Junichiro's fluctuating suspicions for a moment. He'd seemed least suspicious when Theodore had asked about the a bounty for dead Bakemono, when what he'd gained from his altruism was concrete and mercenary. The man thought he might be a bandit… of course he was reassured when his motives proved mercenary, rather than piratical. So he shrugged, deliberately casual, and said in his blandest tone, "And I'm hoping whoever you're delivering that message to will pay me for saving you."

It was truth, after all, if only because Theodore really needed the money.

And Junichiro relaxed, though he didn't answer the question.

'

The next town they reached after only two days travel.

.

The local magistrate glared at Theodore suspiciously - what was it about him that made everyone immediately assume he was planning something nefarious? Wearing his kimono backwards wasn't a crime. If it weren't for Junichiro's travel papers, and the claim that Theodore was traveling with him to protect him on the road, Daidoji Yuu would have been more than happy to arrest him rather than pay him. Still, seventeen Bakemono ears netted him a double handful of coins on a string. Despite the trouble, Junichiro thought he'd gotten a fair bounty for them, especially as he was still willing to share a room at the local inn. The coins weren't going to last long, probably just enough to buy some equipment and supplies, never mind a room of his own.

Sukite was large enough to have an actual market. It wasn't much, just a few carts arranged around the large willow tree in center of the village, whose drivers tried to offload a few wares while they waited for the roads to dry enough to continue to their final wintering destination. But it would be enough to put together something approaching a proper first aid kit and purchase supplies. So while Junichiro checked in to one of the two actual inns here, Theodore purchased a much less expensive meal of a pair of rice balls from a child hawking them to customers coming and going from the blacksmith. The pot was, he hoped, the most expensive of his purchases, and after examining each one available, he picked one that resembled a dutch oven. Then he moved on to the rest of the market.

He noticed there was no meat for sale, nor a butcher among the food merchants, despite this being the time of year for harvesting and slaughtering. That was frustrating. Was meat toxic on this planet? Thus far it'd seemed like a pretty accurate reflection of ancient Terra, Nezumi and Bakemono aside, but it'd be just his luck to drop onto a world - Rokugan, if eavesdropping on conversations was to be trusted - with that sort of inconvenience. He made a mental note to invest in some fish oil or flakes when he got the chance.

Meanwhile he endured the silent questions as he purchased almost as many nuts - formerly expensive Terran imports he didn't know the names of - as rice by volume. Otherwise he stuck to dried foods, rather than heavier pickled or fresh. They were lighter and would last longer.

He noted milk for sale and thought to buy some as they left tomorrow, when it would be fresher. He would have liked to just buy some and drink it to go with his rice balls, but - he shuddered - not without pasteurizing it first. No, he'd use it as the liquid base for their porridge for a day or two. Risgryngröt, like on Free Rasalhague Republic worlds. With that in mind, he started haggling with a merchant for a small container of honey. He didn't see cinnamon for sale anywhere, so it wouldn't be the same, but it'd have protein and vitamins humans generally got from meat. He was seventy-three (not counting the timeless time spent in the Inn) years old. He couldn't afford to go without.

Contemplating the last of his coins, and the mud, rips and fraying of his burial kimono, he examined the selection at the selection offered by the only two carts that sold clothing, rather than cloth. There was no getting around it: he needed second set. He started laying out kimono, hakima and haori, trying to find a set that would fit him that also wasn't two expensive. It turned out, though he'd been strictly average in the Combine, he was rather on the tall side for the people here, but not freakishly so, thank the kami.

He groaned silently in dismay when he realized the only set in his price range was dyed blue and darker blue. He was going to look like a Steiner loyalist, but he handed over the asked-for Bu without complaint. Leaning heavily on the merchant's good will for the enormity of his first purchase, he managed to buy some scraps of red cloth and several spools of red and black thread for only a couple zeni.

That should leave enough to buy milk in the morning, and additional rice balls in a few more towns, before he started starving. By then it'd be almost fully winter and he'd be in more danger of freezing to death than starvation anyway.

Well… Junichiro should have finished checking into their room for the night. His fever had gone down and Theodore was no longer worried about infection. If he was healing well, it was time to start thinking about removing some of the stitches.

.

,

tbc…


	7. Rokugan 04

Ancient wood construction with large sturdy rafters were the beginning and end of similarities between the Welcoming Wolf and the World Serpent. Even the wood smoke scent was different. Burning pine charcoal rather than oaken logs. Shoji screen windows and bright oil lamps burning behind decorated okiandon, rather than solid wooden walls and massive chandeliers and obscuring haze. Tatami mats around low tables, rather than heavy wooden benches and long, sturdy tables. It was everything Theodore could have expected of a small, moderately prosperous, traditional restaurant.

The noise hit him first. The buzz of conversation, the trading, negotiating and storytelling. The boasts and toasts. The drinking and eating. The same constant unchanging hum of activity threatened to overwhelm his senses. He almost expected to see Mitchifer instead of the lean, aging almost-japanese man and his wife serving food and drinks.

Then Junichiro waved his hand for Theodore to join him at the table in the corner and snapped him out of his trance.

The World Serpent was the essence of tavern. An idea of a tavern, imposed on the twisted logic, utter timelessness and unending gates that ultimately defined the place. Would he see its echo, need to pull himself free of its gravitational hold on his psyche, each time he entered one of its lesser, more real, counterparts forever?

A disturbing thought.

The innkeeper frowned when Theodore knelt down next to Junichiro and pulled out the rice balls he'd purchased earlier, rather than waving him over to order food. He braced himself to weather the man's ire, but Junichiro pushed a cup of tea and a bowl of miso soup over to Theodore and the innkeeper turned away, satisfied.

Theodore just looked at his companion.

"Usually on this route I stay at the Traveling Tiger, on the other side of the market, which is more expensive," was his explanation of the offer, taking a sip from his own bowl of soup.

After going through the ritual of politely declining, Junichiro insisting, and finally accepting the gift, he contemplated the two rice balls. Finally he tucked one away for tomorrow, then the other, when, with a look of disgust, Junichiro unceremoniously dumped a whole crawfish into Theodore's bowl, which he didn't bother declining as it obviously wasn't really a gift. Its beady dead eyes stared upward as he tested the flexibility of the shell to see if it was soft enough that he'd be expected and able to eat it. It wasn't, and Junichiro shuddered beside him. He chuckled quietly. He'd eaten some truly disgusting things in the DCMS - like FedSuns survival rations, which were a violation of Ares Conventions - when resupply for the Legions of Vega had failed to come; he wasn't going to turn down a meal just because it was staring at him.

While they ate, he coaxed Junichiro into talking - since he still wouldn't talk about where they were going - about the two inns here in Sukite, and why he chose the Wolf this time instead.

"We would have been kicked out of the Traveling Tiiger," he said bluntly. "It is more respectable, but does not serve ronin." He nodded subtly to Theodore, whose first impulse was to protest, vehemently, but he settled himself. Here, he was not the Coordinator. And he certainly wasn't sworn to a local lord, when meant he was, as oddly as the circumstance had come about, ronin. "Hachirou-san would've call the magistrate to remove us."

"He have something specific against" - us - "ronin, or is it just general dislike?"

Junichiro just shrugged. "I know nothing but what is said." Gossip, in other words. He just nodded, indicating he was interested in what he knew, even if it was only stories told in the market. "It is said that his eldest son left to serve Toturi's Army during the Clan War, and never returned. He has hated all ronin at least that long, but it became more vitriolic when Rikuto-san," he nodded to the innkeeper of the Welcoming Wolf, "married Aya-san," he nodded to the wife, "and took over this place, right as her uncle died of a fever in the night. He renamed the Inn in reference to his time in service to Toturi-sama before he ascended to the throne."

What this had to do with a hatred of ronin was not readily apparent. Toturi was the current emperor, he'd gleaned at least that much from earlier conversations, and Theodore could see no connection to serving in his army, or service to him and ronin. By definition, ronin served no lord.

He was organizing his thoughts, carefully wording his next question so Junichiro would tell him what he wanted to know, without revealing that Theodore didn't possess this apparently widely held piece of knowledge, when a shadow fell over them both.

A boy - well, likely a man in this world - in his late teens stood over them, his face shadowed by the lamp behind him, but his eyes glittered dangerously, echoing the gleam of his armor. "I am Matsuo. I challenge thee to single combat, old man."

Young idiot, was Theodore's impression. He'd worked for a lifetime to drill that impulse out of the DCMS, and that was enough reason to deny him. He sounded like a Clanner, too. He quirked a smile down at his tea cup. "Your decanting technician was a hamster and your denmother smelled of elderberries," he muttered quietly in his best Clan Standard English. "Surat."

"What was that?" the youngster growled.

Theodore sighed. "No. I have no reason fight you. There is neither property nor honor to be gained, and I certainly have no grievance with you."

Matsuo growled, bristling and eyes snapping in anger. "I don't think thou understands,  _old man_. I'm not giving thee a  _choice_." And he drew his sword, which let out a thundering roar, like a lion the size of a Tokugawa class heavy tank. The sound hit him like a physical blow, and he rolled back, trying to gain some distance.

Fuck… fuck… fuckfuckfuckfuck… this was the absolute last situation he wanted to be in. Matsuo was younger, faster… he had a  _katana_  versus Theodore's wakizashi… While the patrons screamed and yelled and ran away… While Rikuto and his wife herded them away from the two combatants…. he scrambled backwards himself, fear clawing at his heart. Fuck. He didn't want to die again…

_Stop_. His thoughts stopped spinning in their panicked circles.  _Calm. A samurai is calm._  He dodged a vicious swipe of the katana as he scrambled away. This is just an arrogant, untried boy. You are Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. You were taught by the best teachers your father could hire, blackmail, or command.  _Then_  you were taught by Subhash-fucking- _Indrahar_  and you didn't survive that old  _witch_ , just to die in a glorified  _bar brawl_  with a wet-behind-the-ears  _child_.

Berating himself to calmness was  _not_  what Subhash had taught him, but it worked. Calm and focus washed over him and he rolled to his feet. "Fine," he growled, "Well bargained and done," though the youngster obviously wouldn't understand the reference and insult.

He waited for Matsuo to stalk forward, in range, and, ducking under the wildly telegraphed overhand swing, drew and struck with his wakizashi in the same motion.

Matsuo reeled back, clutching the wound, then roared and slashed wildly at Theodore, slicing through muscle almost down to the bone of his arm. But his victim was already moving, skittering around a hastily-evacuated table. It was too low to duck behind (he never thought he'd miss western-style furniture) but he flipped it up. Bowls of food and cups of tea were spilled all over, splattering Matsuo from head to toe. Fortune favored Theodore: the teapot - a heavy, indestructible, cast iron pot still full of near-boiling water - smacked the child upside the head, stunning him and sending him to the floor, leaving behind the katana stuck in the table.

Theodore wasted no time, darting around the table and leveling his blade to Matsuo's throat. "Is it worth your life, boy?" he asked between heaving breaths. He made no assumptions about whether or not it was to the youngster. In the Clans, for all their overwhelming enthusiasm for honorable combat and challenge fights, it varied. A Smoke Jaguar probably would chose to die than live with the dishonor of losing such a fight; by the time he'd died, a Ghost Bear probably wouldn't. Rasalhagians, for all their distain for their ways of their 'Combine tyrants', all too often followed the examples set in their stories of Odin and Thor and berzerked, putting the DCMS tradition of seppuku and glorious death in combat to shame. "Is it?"

The younger samurai went limp. "Finish it, gutless outlander."

He nodded, taking a deep breath -

"Not here," the innkeeper interrupted. Theodore looked up. "One ronin killing another - not something a magistrate needs to be called for, but not on my floor. I have enough of a mess to clean up already."

He nodded again, and stepped back, letting Matsuo slowly crawl to his feet. "Outside then."

.

When Theodore returned, arm bandaged with one of Matsuo's thin blankets, Rikuto and Junichiro were arguing quietly about paying for the damages. Yes, Matsuo had started the fight, but it was the courier's bodyguard who'd damaged the table and dishes, and the dead ronin wouldn't be paying anyway. Theodore dumped the armor and a small handful of the coins Matsuo had been carrying at the innkeeper's feet. "Courtesy of the youngling," he said. The armor alone was worth more than everything they'd broken, but the coins went further in placating him. Both of them stared at Theodore, who just raised his eyebrow in question. He was tired, dirty and just wanted to treat his and Junichiro's wounds before going to sleep. He needed some quality time with a bucket of cold water and some soap - despite his best efforts, he had blood on his burial kimono, and he did not want to have to get rid of it.

"We are surprised thou did not simply abscond with the villain's belongings," Junichiro explained as Rikuto huffed and stomped away with his payment. "Most ronin would have, rather than come back and pay for the damages, especially given how little I'm actually paying thee." Theodore shrugged. There was nothing he could really say to that. Given what he knew about the price of rice from his trip to the market, he was being 'paid', the equivalent of about a twentieth of a ryu an hour back in the Combine.

"But then you'd tell everyone what a dishonorable cad I am, no one'll hire me over the winter and I'll starve," it was a ruthlessly pragmatic interpretation of honor. His father's Death to Mercenaries idiocy aside, he knew how it worked for them. A merc lived or starved by his reputation. Death could come on the battlefield, but avoiding the slow decay of losing one's livelihood, leaving behind the rusted-out hulks of battlemechs that had been in a family for centuries because no one could afford repairs until the choice between piracy and starvation became the only one that mattered… that hinged on a mercenary's reputation. A mercenary's interpretation of honor.

Maybe Theodore's now.

Ronin…

Junichiro just looked troubled. Finally he nodded at Matsuo's katana, still stuck in the table. "Thou might as well take it. Neither Rikuto-san nor I can touch it and it is already a ronin's blade, so even if it belongs to a legitimate family, it's likely they will not take it back." He looked at Theodore blandly. "And if Matsuo-san has someone who will avenge him, thou will have already earned their ire by killing him."

Lovely… still, a weapon was a weapon. He picked up the katana. It was light and perfectly balanced. It wasn't the same quality steel his own wakizashi was made of, but it was likely some of the best this world could offer. The tsuba, which he expected to be wood, was actually gold and delicately worked to resemble two lions circling the blade and the hilt was inlayed with ivory and more gold, wrapped in purple silk. But the pommel was a true work of art, a incredibly lifelike gold lion's head with fierce amethyst eyes and showing delicate ruby teeth within its snarl.

"Shishiken," he murmured to it quietly.

"What was that?" the courier asked.

Theodore shook himself. "Nothing." He'd given away the sheath along with Matsuo's armor, so he simply lowered the blade and adjusted his grip. He'd worry about carrying it for travel in the morning. Even if the rest of the money Matsuo had been carrying was enough to replace it, the nature of such things meant he would need to wait until they got wherever they were going so he could find a sayashi who could make one. "Do we still have a room here? I'd like to wash my things, and your wounds need to be checked." Not to mention he needed to properly clean, stitch and bandage his arm, which, fuck. Sewing up his own arm…  _that_  was going to be fun -  _not!_

At least he now had two extra kimono, though Matsuo's had blood on it too.

.

.

tbc...

.

so… i actually have a round-by-round combat report for theodore and matsuo's fight. i won't for every fight (and even those i do have, i might not post since some fights may be pages and pages long), but here's this one if anyone's interested. if not skip it. it doesn't say anything that isn't in the story (except how incredibly, stupidly lucky theodore is).

matsuo (lvl 5 fighter) vs theodore (lvl 1 ronin samurai, sword saint archetype)

initiative is rolled. matsuo, 7. theodore, 4. they both suck at initiative. panicking civilians, 12. wtf? panicking civilians move away from both combatants at their full speed every turn, and because they're first in the initiative order, none of them become collateral damage. yay for them.

round 1

matsuo: move action - draws katana, which roars, granting a circumstance bonus on intimidate checks this round. standard action - intimidate check (with bonus) to demoralize (28 vs 14 DC, success)

theodore: gains a save at the beginning of his turn to attempt to reduce the shaken condition to unaffected (natural 20, critical success). move action - crawl away from matsuo; attempts an acrobatics check to move out of a threatened space (skill check of 8 vs CMD of 9, failed); matsuo attempts an attack of opportunity (6 vs 7 AC, failed). standard action - takes a second move action to stand from prone. swift action - uses samurai challenge ability

round 2

matsuo: move action - steps closer to theodore. standard action - attack (10 vs AC 11, fails)

theodore: full round action - iaijutsu strike (19 vs 17 AC, critical threat, roll of 13 does not confirm, 11 damage)

round 3

matsuo: full round action, two attacks with power attack (first attack - 21 vs 11 AC, 10 damage; second attack - 10 vs 11 AC, fail)

theodore: flips up the table to gain fifty percent cover. matsuo's attack of opportunity critically fails causing the teapot to attack him. teapot attacks (natural 20, 8 damage plus stunned, 1 round duration). as per the definition of stunned, he drops everything in his hands, getting the katana stuck in the table.

round 4

matsuo: as per the definition of stunned, he cannot take any actions this round

theodore: move action - moves to matsuo. standard action - attempts an intimidate check to demoralize his opponent (20 vs 14 DC, success). matsuo uses a free action on theodore's turn to surrender.


	8. Rokugan 05

The rest of their journey went more smoothly than the first week of it had led Theodore to expect it could. Carts joined them on the road, and while their drivers looked askance at Junichiro and him, whatever they saw, they judged them not worth a second glance. The roads (dirt ruts still barely worth the name to Theodore) were almost overcrowded with people and animals and even the occasional entourage of what had to be samurai, all headed the same direction they were.

They went through three more villages the size of Fujieda, with similar accommodations. Which actually meant they ended up sleeping in three barns, rather than proper rooms that had already been rented to cart-drivers. At least the goats occasional pony were inoffensive roommates, and the barns were surprisingly warm and comfortable, but he wasn't about to unwrap either of their wounds or removing stitches in the hay. Instead he used the money taken from Matsuo to bribe various peasants for the use of their kitchens. Junichiro didn't understand what the fuss was, but the thought of tending wounds in an animal pen under non-battlefield conditions viscerally disgusted him, even if realistically the kitchens weren't much cleaner.

Fortunately there wasn't a repeat of Mei's particular brand of terrified generosity. His kimono got strange looks, but no one asked. Just as importantly, no one insisted that he not pay for his meals… maybe because this time around he actually could pay for his meals.

Of course, it could also be that those samurai entourages never paid for anything the villagers gave them, and even the possibility of supernatural retribution paled in comparison to the certainty of starvation over the winter.

As it was, Theodore's temper was fraying thin with the number of times he'd been told to get back "in his place." His  _place_ , he had to keep himself from snarling each time, was the Coordinator of an interstellar empire of 300 controlled systems. How  _dare-!_  He somehow managed to keep his temper, though, and relaxed as they entered the town of Kasuka.

Kasuka was larger than Sukite, but not by much. It still only had two inns, but it had an actual market, with a dozen permanent shops. Instead of selling goods to passers-by, the carters were haggling with shopkeepers for their trades. The cart-merchants would then over winter either with family here, or in a dorm-house that provided accommodations, but nothing further, Junichiro quietly explained when he noticed Theodore's interest.

Begging his companion's patience, he darted into one shop that sold stationary pieces to exchange a zeni for the materials to create a gift for his host.

.

To Theodore, the lord's keep - located near the center of Kasuka - looked more Capellan than Draconis. That is to say, more Chinese than Japanese. Oh… from what he could see of the building as they approached, the aesthetics were right, with shimmering blue shingles layered over the tapered rooftop. But the style of the walled-in garden surrounding the keep would not have been out of place on Sian. Also, it was small, as he judged such things. Tiny even. While he knew, intellectually, that it must represent a measurable investment of the surrounding area's wealth, to a man who'd grown up in the Imperial Palace on Luthian (not to mention the various vacation and summer homes his mother had maintained) it was miniscule.

Gods - the entire keep, gardens and all, would have fit inside the landing footprint of a  _Merchant_ -class dropship.

Sure Kasuka was a small town, presiding over a small area, but the croplands they'd travelled through were not poor. Surely the ruler of even so small an area should have a keep larger than a decently sized house in the FedSuns. Nevertheless, it was what it was, he thought, as they were led from the servants' entrance next to the main gate to the lord's study, which was one of two buildings within the compound separate from the two main buildings within the keep.

The lord accepted Junichiro's missive and read it silently while Theodore waited by the door to be acknowledged or dismissed. With a nod of satisfaction, he set it aside after a few minutes and skewered Theodore with his gaze.

Were he home, on Luthien, he would have judged him to be about his own age. Given what he knew about relative expected lifespans on lower-tech planets, he was probably twenty years younger than that. Like Junichiro, he dressed in sky blue. Unlike the courier's simple blue and white yukata, the lord's was silk, trimmed in silver and embroidered heavily with crane designs.

"Courier, please introduce our guest," it was not a request.

Junichiro did not treat it like it was. He bowed low. "My lord, this is Kurita Te-o-do-san," Theodore managed not to bristle, both at the mispronouncation of his name - unintentional, unintentional, he kept telling himself; not an insult - and at being introduced first. He was a  _ronin_ , not the Coordinator. "Kurita-san, this is General Daidoji Shiro, Lord of Kasuka and the surrounding villages."

"Hajimemashite." "Douzo yoroshiku."

They bowed, the general standing to do so, properly, if not as deeply as he should have on Theodore's part.

"A gift," he continued with a flourish such as those he'd employed when he was young and charming, and which would have put anyone who'd known him then, or Hanse because Hanse may have considered Takashi to be his rival in the Combine but he'd always been wary of the 'little' dragon, immediately on their guard, "for the lord of the house, in thanks for his most generous hospitality."

General Daidoji's eyes narrowed, suspicious of a ronin trying to be charming on general principles, but he accepted the gift and politely examined it. An incredibly complicated leaf-green origami katydid and a less realistic but no-less complicated origami maple leaf were carefully sewn to a bare branch. Turning the mirco-scene critically to see it from every angle, he touched the katydid gently and with appreciation for the skill that had gone into the whole item's construction. Black ink-lines created an abstract pattern over the pale orange paper of the leaf, and he snipped it away, leaving the insect alone on the bare branch.

With a grunt he politely set to unfolding the leaf to reveal the message. Just as politely, Theodore waited. He knew what the General would find, of course.

_White ice on the edge_

_Of red leaves yet unfallen_

_Too soon, too early_

Instead of worrying overmuch about his gift, he studied the room, and indirectly, the man who occupied it. It tried giving the impression of function over form (a very plain wooden desk, chair and shelves) and a glorification of the military over all else (weapon displays, a painting of a great battle on one wall), but in truth, what Theodore saw was a man who liked his comforts (plush carpet and chair cushions), and who loved his family more than his military career (the other wall had painted portraits of his wife and two children; a haiku written by a child was hung with great honor over am ikibana display of autumn flowers and leaves). One that, perhaps, disliked court life (court documents on the shelves had been rolled and stowed with, ah, distinctive frustrated force) and had worked hard to be allowed his comfortable, utterly unimportant domain (the tax reports on his desk were scrupulously and perfectly done, so far as Theodore could see, giving a superior no reason to notice or investigate his tiny domain).

Dangerously competent, was his final judgement. Lords that worked so hard at being so unimportant usually were.

Twenty minutes later, when Daidoji Shiro had finally managed to pick apart the complicated folds and read the revealed haiku, he looked up and Theodore could see that he was reluctantly impressed.

"Courier, you are dismissed," neither of them looked at Junichiro as he bowed and practically scampered from the room. "Thou invested much to ensure my courier arrived safe and healthy."

 _En garde - pret - allez_ , Theodore thought ruefully. The opening salvo of a trap. Something he'd done a number of times when he'd been the one on the other side of a desk. It was tempting to downplay his actions, or dismiss them as motivated by decency and honor, but if he did so the general would likewise offer his sincere thanks - not payment. However, if he openly requested a return on his investment, he'd be judged uncouth and perhaps even rude. Definitely honorless. He might walk out with a string of coins, but that wouldn't hold him through the winter. "Junichiro-san was a pleasure to travel with," he said instead, saying of course, absolutely nothing.

Daidoji's eyes narrowed. Impressed and perhaps a bit frustrated that his bait had not been taken by a mere ronin. He tried again. "Thou must be disappointed to find only a tired old general, retired from court, at the end of your journey."

Theodore wasn't going to take that bait either. "Only as disappointed as a fallen leaf adrift on a stream coming to rest ashore before winter's freeze." That is to say, he wasn't disappointed, because he'd had no expectations.

He had no place else to be.

"Hmm…" he looked down at the haiku and the suddenly ominously bare branch. The katydid was a summer insect, and would not survive the falling of all the leaves from its home tree. The gift alone could have been a simple reference to the season, but combined with his words… "I see. Thou are cutting it close, aren't thee?" Theodore nodded, confirming a fact. "Thine actions suggest you are a man of honor, despite your station, but I have no place in my guards."

He kept himself from snapping, as he had on the road. Instead he pointedly stripped al the humble markers from his speech, leaving them plain and painfully neutral. "I understand."

The general wrote something on a piece of paper. "One item that can be purchased from my shops or craftsmen, for my courier's safety."

"The general is too kind," no more humble than his previous statement.

Ignoring the ronin's words - the point was well made: without the possibility of his  _requested_  payment, the ronin had no further reason to lower himself before a minor lord - he stamped the message with his chop in red and handed the voucher to Theodore. "And an offer: find my son, and I will make thee a member of this court, humble as it is."

.

.

tbc...


	9. Rokugan 06

It sounded like such a simple request to be filled: the boy had been lost during a hunting trip and was still missing. Theodore had been asked to find him. Sounds simple? Hehe… 

The problems began with the timing. The boy had actually been missing for several weeks. Any trail he might have left was long gone -- more so than natural; the General had actually made his offer of a court position as a general announcement of reward right after his son had gone missing, and as such the area was riddled with the trails of the many searchers who had long given up the search. Even with a noble title as a potential reward there was only so long that farmers and craftspersons could be away from their work before suffering for it.

Further, the day before Theodore and Junichiro had arrived, a ransom letter had been delivered to the general's keep. A group of local bandits led by someone called (or called himself) Akahito claimed they had found the boy and were now demanding that the general bring twenty koku to the "warehouse by the lake" in another village entirely (fortunately one that was only a day's travel from Kasuka) before the night of the full moon. Which was four days from now. Why the villains had decided on this course instead of just returning the boy for the reward -- far in excess of the demand of mere money they had made -- was a mystery.

So Theodore was trying to rescue a boy from a group of bandits (unknown number) from their lair (unknown location) before four days were up. Without knowing if the boy was alive or not. Joy.

Why was he doing this again? Oh, right… freezing to death was an unpleasant way to die. Theodore didn't know what happened to people who died while traveling the afterlife, but he doubted he'd wake up in the taproom of the Inn a second time, like reseting a vidgame after seeing "Game Over" flash over his avatar's horribly mangled mech and corpse. All he knew was that he had not woken in the Christians' Heaven (or Hell), nor reborn as many other faiths claimed (he doubted he'd ever meet the criteria for nirvana); his soul was on some sort of journey, one as physical as it was spiritual, and thus the perils he faced were real. 

Narrative causality had brought him to Daidoji Shiro right as the general had needed someone to investigate the matter and the encroaching winter had left Theodore little choice but to accept the task. He could recognize a plot hook when it whacked him across the back of his head.

That didn't mean he was happy about traipsing through the brush between Kasuka and Suda, weaving his way around stands of bamboo and cussing at kudzu vines that seemed to reach out and snag the hem of his kimono for the sole purpose of tearing holes in the new cloth, looking for bandits.

He'd figured (guessed really) that given the location of the ransom drop, they were based closer to Suda than to Kasuka. The area around Kasuka was mostly rice fields anyway. Lucrative, but hardly a place where a group of bandits could go unnoticed for even a few days. Suda apparently sustained itself mostly on fish caught from the lake and wood harvested from the surrounding forest of mixed bamboo and pines.That only left about a thousand acres to search in the next four days -- a pain in the ass using light mechs and infrared scanners; impossible on foot. Okay… next guess: He'd never done any of the pirate hunting patrols in the DCMS -- much too ignoble an assignment for the heir, even considering his assignment to the Legions of Vega -- but he knew the theory. Pirate jumpships (those that weren't part of the so-called pirate "nations") were often held together by chewing gum and wishful thinking, so they were rarely based more than a single jump from targets. It still made for some tedious searching, but it turned the vastness of space into an actual search radius. Given the lifestyle of banditry in general, it couldn't be much different for Akahito and his men; they probably wouldn't be very far from the roads, of which there was only the one between Kasuka and Suda and the one from Suka to the next village. 

After making those two assumptions about the bandits' location, Theodore had copied Daidoji's most accurate map of the area (cursing that it had no mention of landmarks beyond the roads, villages and the lake), divided it up into a grid and devised a search pattern that prioritized the most likely grid squares based on those two assumptions, and set out. He had four days…

.

Three days…

.

Two days…

.

One day…

.

With only a fraction of his thought process, Theodore idly wondered which god was currently in charge of his fate. He wanted to know its name, so he could properly blaspheme by it. The rest of his attention was currently in staying hidden from view from the band passing within three meters of where he crouched in the brush. The men were lean and dangerous in the manner of starving wolves. They wore ragged clothes and bore only barely serviceable weapons. More than one of them had the bloody katana breaking free of a red circle that was the seal for Akahito's band stitched onto their kimono. Theodore cursed narrative causality. He'd given up the search and had been headed to Suda and the warehouse to report his failure to Daidoji when he'd stumbled across them at literally the last moment possible.

He'd barely hidden himself in time.

They didn't have the kid with them, so he watched them pass. Then when they were well gone, he slipped from his hiding place and began the process of backtracking their trail to their lair.

.

Of course it was a cave. Why should he have expected something different? 

He cleaned the blood of the two lookouts off his wakazashi and disposed of the bodies. He'd have just left them where they fell, but he wanted the bandits to return from the warehouse believing nothing was amiss. He had a feeling that, after failing to retrieve his son before the deadline, he would get no sort of reward at all (and probably accused of collusion with Akahito's ilk) if he returned with the kid, but without the ransom money. 

He moved into the cave slowly, allowing his eyes the chance to adjust. 

Well… if worst came to worst, he could just camp out here for the winter. The bandits had acquired everything needed to turn a hole in the ground into someplace barely habitable. Fifteen bedrolls. Fifteen bandits -- thirteen, now, without their home guard. Piles of ragged clothes and other odds. Enough rice and other foodstuffs to see the band through a lean winter (a feast for Theodore alone). Rope, weapons, armor and all manner of junk. But no kid. Crap.

Okay. So either the bandits had the kid with them, or they'd never had him. If they had him with them, stashed someplace in the village until the ransom exchange, then all Theodore could do was kill them, retrieve the ransom money, and hope that was enough to net him some leniency from Daidoji. Then he'd come back to the cave and wait out the winter here. If the bandits had never had him, then Theodore needed to retrieve the ransom, find the kid or at least proof of death, and collect some sort of payment (and, depending on how angry Daidoji was about failing to retrieve the kid on time, probably still wait out the winter in this cave).

Either way, first he had to take care of the bandits.

Thirteen against one… not good odds, whether you were speaking of battlemechs, warships, or farm tools. He was an old man. And these were no goblins, evil little creatures with no training, no tactics and no sense of self preservation. These were men. Perhaps they had training and perhaps not. Either way, as proven by the fight with Matsuo in the Welcoming Wolf, any fight could be deadly. And he still had only his wakazashi as a useable weapon, as he would not dishonor the shishiken by drawing in in combat until he had replaced the lost saya. He cast his eyes about the lair, searching for some way he could change his odds of survival…

… and his eyes fell on the stash of sake and shochu against one of the cave walls. That'd do.

.

The bandits returned, crowing at their success and tossing the bag full of ransom money between them. They were quick to break into their stash and celebrate by getting completely drunk. There had been a short conversation about where the lookouts might be, but the consensus was that they were at the latrine and if they wanted to miss the party, it was their loss, to Theodore's relief. Soon after, the alcohol had taken effect and they'd forgotten all about their missing comrades.

He hoped that they would talk about the boy as he lurked within earshot of those gathered around the fire built outside the cave, and the kami had taken pity on him. One of the filthier looking bandits had nudged the one the others called Akahito in the arm and nearly fallen over for his efforts.

As his comrades laughed, he managed to right himself and raise his cup in a sort of toast. "We sure fooled that … that…" he slurred.

"Idiot." "Moron." "Honorless lord." were some some suggested called out by those surrounding the fire.

"HIM," the filthy one finished firmly as he could with his eyes crossed like that. "Showed him. Didn't even have the kid and we still got paid." He leaned heavily on Akahito, who shoved him away, sending him sprawling again. This time he didn't bother getting up.

"He's just soft on his family." the leader snarled, "Whole provence knows that. When it gets here, we'll kill it and decide what to with the kid, but until someone brings some proof of death the General'll pay us well to keep believing the brat was rescued by shape shifters and is living happy and free in Chikushudo or some fairytale crap like that."

Well… maybe this venture wasn't a total loss then, Theodore thought as the bandits all cheered.

Which was about when the first of them threw up.

It was like watching every one of his instructors' _wilderness survival on alien planets_ horror stories come to life in vivid holo-color. Except the ones about being eaten inside out by insectoid larvae… and it was nothing like the stories of cordyceps-ish fungi turning people into ravenous zombies. Or.. he shuddered, dismissing that topic of thought. Planetary exploration was not for the faint of heart. Of course Theodore didn't have any more knowledge of what was poisonous (other than everything until proven otherwise) on this planet than he did about what was edible. Still there were some must avoid at all costs guidelines he'd been taught that had proven useful: _the fruiting bodies of psudo-fungi are commonly toxic in all ecosystems_ and _if its colors make it stand out from the surrounding environment, it's probably toxic_. Also _if it's growing in a dead body, human or otherwise, by all that is fucking holy, **don't eat it**_ but that hadn't proved relevant here. So he'd gathered a random assortment of brightly colored toadstools, crushed them using a wooden bowl and the pommel of a knife from the bandits' lair, and added the resulting paste to the bottles of booze.

It took two hours for all of them to become incapacitated. Some threw up and clutched their stomachs as though trying to tear the offending guts from their miserable bodies. Others visibly hallucinated chasing or being chased by things only they could see. Three of them had killed each other in a drugged fit of temper and a fourth lay seriously wounded in the leaf litter not far from the cave. One just lay in an unconscious heap of limbs, never so much as twitching, even as one of his comrades stepped on an arm hard enough to break bone while chasing imaginary butterflies. There was no way to know whether the alcohol had hindered or expedited the onset of symptoms, but it certainly didn't help lessen their severity.

It wasn't honorable to slice their throats while they were in such a state. He could practically hear his father's voice ranting at him as he granted them the dignity of a merciful death. It was a rant he'd heard many times; he'd long been able to recite it word for word. To boost morale, he'd run betting pools with the Legions on the length, timing and exact wording of Takashi's next call regarding his son's dishonorable tactics.

But these were pirates -- bandits -- and the Clans and the Inner Sphere agreed on that at least: they were men without honor and deserved no honor in return.

Still, he used his wakazashi, rather than a scavenged knife. If his was now a mercenary's honor, he would not pretend otherwise by shielding his blade from unpleasant tasks.

He disposed of the bodies (collecting ears and the insignias off their kimono as proof of death, in case he could collect a bounty) and the tainted sake, and cleaned the cave of the blood and vomit and secured the foodstuffs from tampering by wildlife. He still might have to use this cave in the future after all. Then he sat, with his own meager meal of rice and nuts. He'd retrieved the ransom money. Step one complete. Tomorrow he'd have to begin searching for the bandits' contact and the boy or proof of his death. A daunting task, but for now it was growing dark and cold as autumn in the woods often did, and the cave was dry and relatively warm. It aught to be; he had enough bedrolls to supply a company of mech pilots.

.  
.

tbc…

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so… ah… poisoning and honor: sufficed to say that Theodore operates on a modern Draconis Combine definition of honor, which is very different from the Rokugani definition of honor. And in both definitions, ronin/mercenaries and bandits/pirates operate in a sort of grey area. Yes, in both countries, poisoning your opponents is considered dishonorable and technically that applies to pirates/bandits as well, but… 
> 
> In the Combine, however, the number one priority of most assigned to pirate hunting is actually to capture the pirates' jumpship intact. That piece of equipment -- even if it's held together by chewing gum and wishful thinking -- is worth more than preserving your honor in combat. It usually didn't come down to using chemical weapons, since most jumpships are unarmed and the crews surrender as soon as their fighter escort is killed, but Theodore was assigned to the dregs of the Combine military. He may never have done any pirate hunting himself, but he definitely would have heard stories while he was young, angry, and impressionable.
> 
> In Rokugan, how you're perceived by those around you is the basis of your honor and those bandits are sentenced to death anyway, so in some clans what he did would have been acceptable as long as there were no witnesses and he didn't brag about it later.
> 
> Neither the Draconis Combine nor Rokugan are nice places sometimes.


	10. Rokugan 07

Alien crickets chirped an equally alien rhythm: _Chee-Chirp. Chee-Chirp. Chee-Chee-Chirp._

That was how they knew the enemy was resting for the night, as they were. The tread of battlemechs silenced the forest even before the ponderous footsteps could be heard by human ears. 

_Chee-Chirp. Chee-Chirp. Chee-Chee-Chirp._

He brushed dust from his DEST uniform, settling the lion-pommeled katana between his shoulder blades, and began his patrol. He moved around the camp, checking on his soldiers. They collected together around lanterns and tent heaters. It was cold and the soldiers wore a mix of their service uniforms and their dress uniforms, all in SLDF green. The camp was tense, as it always was the eve before the battle and to lighten the mood of the soldiers, he saluted Takashi-the-rat, his unit's flag, with a single finger. Chuckles spread out around him and the soldiers relaxed a notch. He ended his patrol, as he always did, at his own battlemech, a captured Clan _Masakari_. The Legions of Vega lacked a formal color scheme, but favored reds and greys and his own was no different. A rabbit hopped away from his reflection in the charcoal grey paint. 

His father stood behind his reflection, but he ignored the Coordinator as he swung into the cockpit of his familiar _Orion_. The nova cat curled up on his chair protested when he moved it so that he could run a system check. He had to be careful to avoid it's poisonous spines as it ruffled it's fur to express its displeasure. It huffed grumpily and jumped up on his console to clean one of it's wicked claws.

He ignored it and settled into the seat to run the system check, a checklist of actions as familiar as his own heartbeat...

_Chee-Chirp_. Chee-Chirp. Chee-Chee-Chirp.

There was a cricket in his cockpit. 

_Chee-Chirp._ Chee-Chirp.

Theodore opened his eyes in time to see the shadow briefly block out the light of the moon as it moved into the cave. He watched the creature through stealthy, narrow slits between his eyelids, creeping his hand towards his wakazashi next to him. When it stood to it's full height to sniff one of the rice barrels, briefly catching the moonlight again, then returned to all fours, he recognized what it was.

He moved and heard the Nezumi start, knocking over a pile of the bandits' junk. It squeaked in distress and began scurrying back to the entrance of the cave.

"Wait," he called after it. He couldn't be certain it stopped as it had moved so quietly before he'd startled it, but the sounds of frightened scurrying stopped. He groaned and levered himself out of the bedroll he'd commandeered and fumbled for a candle. He wished briefly for a cigarette lighter, but then resigned himself to lighting it from the dark coals that still smoldered outside.

Eye shine was the first thing he saw, then the rest of the Nezumi resolved itself. This one was covered in uniform dark brown fur and its kimono was a tattered woman's garment, pink with a pattern of white flowers. He wanted to conclude that the Nezumi was female as a result, but he refrained. Everything he'd seen of Rokugan thus far made him think that Nezumi were scavengers; would the difference between a woman's garment and a man's mean anything to a non-human? It twitched its whiskers as Theodore placed the candle on a flat rock. "What brings you to this cave, friend?"

It twitched an ear. "Aka-aka promised to bring Ik'rik'uk the treasure."

Aka-aka must refer to the bandit, Akahito. "Why?"

"I find boy-pup. Boy-pup's father is chief-chief of no-hair warren. Chief-chief make promise: bring back pup and get big reward, but Nezumi no-no can go to human warren." The creature didn't stop twitching.

"I see," he could envision what had happened. Ik'rik'uk had found the boy (or a boy; there was no guarantee that a Nezumi could distinguish between humans accurately enough to recognize the General's son) and heard about the reward. But he knew that he couldn't go near the town without trouble and had approached the bandits to retrieve it for him. The bandits of course had made plans to kill the Nezumi and the child he guarded and keep whatever they extorted from Daidoji. "My name is Kurita Theodore," he introduced himself, in part because A'Timitr'D'n'Kir had been so concerned with its name when they'd met and in part for lack of anything else to say while he thought.

"My name Ik'rik'uk. It is a good name." It sat back on its haunches, curling its hairless tail around it's hind feet. "You kill-kill Aka-aka?"

"Yes." He followed the creature's lead and settled on the floor of the cave, though he sat on one of the bedrolls as the stone was cold. "Is Daidoji Shota safe and well?"

It scratched behind one ear, chasing some sort of flea or louse with long dextrous fingers. When it caught the irritant, it examined the speck between its claws and perfunctorily ate whatever it was. "Him safe-safe in tribe warren. Aka-aka no nice, even for no-nice no-hairs. Came for treasure, then take Shota to edge of human warren where he find his own way home-home."

Theodore chuckled. He'd bet his Orion that if the topic ever came up, his fellow humans would claim that the Nezumi's manner of speech was indicative of stupidity, but he would never believe it. "I don't have your treasure." 

"You maybe go and get for me?" it asked hopefully. "Tribe say no-hair pup no-worth anything. Want to take him back to where I found him, or give him to nurse-mother to raise with her litter. I say I can get treasure, so tribe keep him safe today."

Theodore thought. He certainly couldn't give Ik'rik'uk the ransom money he'd recovered from the bandits. "What sort of treasure do you want?"

It shrugged it's narrow shoulders. "Any-any thing. Shiny things. Warm things."

He wanted access to this cave and its food in case the General was angry enough to refuse Theodore because he failed to retrieve the boy before the full moon, but in truth he didn't need much of what the bandits had collected beyond the foodstuffs. Conversely, if Daidoji were still insistent on giving the offered reward, rather than the one Theodore wanted, he could rightfully insist that the court position go to the one who'd actually found the boy and kept him safe these last few weeks. That offer had not just been made to Theodore, but to anyone who could find Shota, and it would amuse him greatly to see the General's reaction to Theodore's insistence that the court position go to Ik'rik'uk instead.

He laughed, earning a blink from the Nezumi. 

Theodore shook his head. He began sorting through the stuff. He claimed an extra bedroll and rolled it up and piled it with a flint and steel, a knife, a wooden bowl and chopsticks, candles and a few other things he'd not yet managed to acquire in the way of camping gear. Then he sorted through the piles of junk, pulling out the functional pieces needed to clean and maintain his swords, a decorated hair comb, a compass, and several spools of cotton thread in several colors and a few small items of clothing like a headband and two pairs of tabi socks that weren't in too much disrepair. These he piled together at the end of the cave with his pack and moved everything else away. "Could you help me?" he asked, gesturing to one of the rice barrels and indicating that he wanted it moved to the end with his things. Ik'rik'uk's whiskers twitched, then without a word or gesture of agreement he did as asked.

When they had the cave arranged the way Theodore wanted, he drew a line in the dust, separating the food and things he was keeping from the rest of the bandits’ loot. "If you bring Shota here, tomorrow during daylight, I will give you everything on this," he gestured to the piles of the bandits' spoils, "side of the line for your tribe. We can talk about further treasure then, yes?"

Ik'rik'uk cocked its head thoughtfully. Its eyes could have been blank and beady, but were actually very expressive, though Theodore didn't trust his judgement when determining just what they were expressing. It dug experimentally through the piles as though estimating their value, then it turned and left the cave without word or gesture of agreement or denial.

.

He could still hear the damn crickets. Nothing like the night-calling insects of Luthien, these insisted on holding to an alien, more Terran, rhythm. It was at the same time both soothing and maddening. He kept trying to make sense of something that he knew was at it's core utterly strange to him.

Chee-Chrip. Chee-Chee-Chirp.

He rather wanted to go and murder every one of the damn bugs.

The crickets wouldn't bother him so much if he could go back to sleep. He wasn't afraid to dream again. The juxtaposition of images had been strange, but not truly unsettling. He had issues with his father, his sons and with the whole damn march of history since he was assigned to the Legions… it wasn't news to him. The reflection of Takashi on a surface that should not have been reflective, a battlemech that had never sported that color scheme, and a nova cat sitting in Kerensky's _Orion_ were no surprise to his old and battered psyche. 

He didn't know why he wasn't going back to sleep.

Chee-Chirp.

So he chose to blame the crickets, cursing them as he paced and waited for dawn and the hope that Ik'rik'uk would return with Shota when the sun rose.

He wiped his face and scowled. He badly needed to shave.

He paced, then repacked his gear and spoils, then paced some more, over and over until dawn. Then he relit the fire and paced while he cooked a breakfast of rice porridge and pickled greens. He made enough for himself and his anticipated guests, covering the pot and letting it sit over the coolest part of the fire, where it could stay warm all day without scorching. Then he paced.

Of all the things he'd ever believed he might regret not grabbing from the Inn before storming out the door, one of those obscenely boring treatises that were routinely retrieved from the back rooms had not been something he'd thought he might miss. But mind-numbing was something he wouldn't mind right about now.

A rustle had him whirling to face the new arrivals: Ik'rik'uk, another Nezumi with dark fur and kimono made entirely of patched cloth in a dozen colors, and finally a young boy of about ten. Theodore relaxed. "Daidoji Shota?" he asked, kneeling down to get a closer look at him.

The boy crowded close to Ik'rik'uk, who chittered something in his own tongue and ran a clawed hand through the messy black hair comfortingly. "Yes," he finally answered, "I am."

Theodore'd need a better look at him to be reasonably certain, but he nodded anyway. "I've made breakfast for you and your friends." He gestured to the fire and the porridge still warming there. While they ate he got a good look at the boy. He resembled his father, which was fortunate and relaxed Theodore further. He also clung to Ik'rik'uk or the other Nezumi like they were the last bastions of safety in a terrifying world. If Theodore had not already been planning on taking Ik'rik'uk back with them, that would have made him reconsider.

"KuritaTheodore," Ik'rik'uk said once they were done. "You say cave-treasure is for tribe? I bring Rik'ka'jik to mark line."

Theodore bowed to the other Nezumi, introducing himself and noting that Ik'rik'uk chittered along with his words, translating. The darker Nezumi chittered back. "Rik'ka'jik say you are good no-hair. She ask you to show-show her mark."

He led them to the back of the cave. "Here," he pointed as Ik'rik'uk chittered-translated. "I'll be taking the pack with me when I leave, and if I do not return by the next full moon your tribe may claim the foodstuffs as well."

There was a short, high pitched conversation. "She say she understand. She make sure tribe leave food for you, until tomorrow-moon."

He let the Nezumi begin their marking, which seemed to involve a lot of rubbing her nose on the cave walls on the part of Rik'ka'jik and wandered over to Shota, who himself had wandered off to examine the piles of bandit-junk. "Hello, Shota-san," he kept his voice low and soothing. The boy looked up and stumbled back a step. He looked like he would have liked to bolt for the two Nezumi but held his ground. Brave young samurai. "My name is Kurita Theodore. Your father sent me to look for you."

This got the boy's interest. "Papa?"

"Would you like to introduce your new friend to your papa?" he asked, figuring that the idea that one of the Nezumi would be coming with them might make him braver.

He was right; Shota stood up taller, looked less ready to bolt. "Yes-yes I would, sir."

Theodore tilted his head a bit, curious. General Daidoji had said nothing about his son having a stutter… 

…Actually that didn't quite sound like an actual stutter; it sounded more like the way the Ik'rik'uk and A'Timitr occasionally repeated words when talking. Several weeks living with the Nezumi was obviously going to leave its mark. That was going to make things interesting for the family, he thought.

Then shrugged. It wasn't his concern.

.  
.

tbc...

.


	11. Rokugan 08

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …for being the chapter that was holding me up, it sure turned out relatively short…

The General was ecstatic to see his son again, and bringing back the ransom money certainly kept Theodore in his good graces. However he was not happy with he suggestion of giving a Nezumi a court position.

Shota, however, smoothed that one over himself, refusing to be parted with the person who’d rescued him from to the woods and cared for him for weeks. Refusing to the order of a tantrum that could probably be heard in the town; certainly everyone in the keep heard it. Theodore just stood back and pretended not to see the family drama playing out in front of him, except when specifically addressed, declining the reward that rightfully belonged to Ik’rik’uk. Granting him the court position was just the easiest and most honorable solution all around and it wasn’t long before the Nezumi was sent off with a servant for a bath.

While, he had found the General’s expression at being confronted with Ik’rik’uk as the boy’s rescuer to be privately hilarious, as the conflict wore on, Theodore just felt tired. The familiar-strange politics were just wearing and he was rapidly losing his patience for them.

Finally the family drama was over and the only reason Theodore hadn’t slipped away to spend the winter in the bandits’ cave was that he was still hoping for some sort of payment. Or a bounty for the dead bandits. It wasn’t a very strong hope, but it would be rude to simply slip out without being dismissed.

The General seated himself behind the desk with a sigh and started counting out coins in reward for the dead bandits. Fifteen ears, thirty small coins — less than the bounty for the Bakemono, both per dead bandit and in total, but Theodore wasn’t going to complain. ”Where will thou go, ronin?"

Theodore looked over from his perusal of the shelf of scrolls where he had been pretending that the nearby family drama wasn’t actually happening. "I cleared out the bandits. Their hiding place will not be a comfortable place to spend the winter, but it will suffice."

He paused his count. ”Thou would spend the winter in a brigand's lair before joining my court?"

He turned back to General Daidoji. "I have no wish to offend, but it appears that I will.” Time to deflect from his true motivations. "Ik'rik'uk is the one who found your son; it is him that deserves your reward. I only allowed him to come to you."

Never mind that once he had a _survivable_ place to spend the winter that didn't include swearing fealty to a minor lord of a minor province of an empire that didn't even encompass the entire planet it sat on, a battalion of battlemechs wouldn't have been enough to force him to his knees. Ik'rik'uk was a convenient excuse to dodge that particular "reward" without explaining why.

"This from the ronin who was mercenary enough to request a reward for safeguarding my courier." The general put the coins in a silk bag and handed them over. 

_I didn't exactly have another place to spend the winter then, did I?_ He thought, as he tucked the coins away, but said, "The bear sleeps; the nightingale leaves; the moth dies," which was still too blunt for strict courtesy but Theodore was beyond caring. He didn’t strictly _need_ anything this man could offer him. He turned to leave.

"Wait," Theodore did so, though he didn't look at his host again. This was not and never would be his lord. "Thou have retrieved my son - yes, I know," he did not allow Theodore to interrupt to remind him who was responsible for his Shota's safety. "But the fact remains that the ratling could not have come forward without thine actions, and thou retrieved that which I lost to Akahito's band in the process, keeping nothing but the cleared out bandit's lair for thine own." And not even most of that, though he did not inform Daidoji of exactly how much that cave had contained… or about any of the stuff he'd given the Nezumi. "Thou have shown thyself to be a man of integrity, if not honor."

Theodore heard Daidoji stand and pace the room behind his desk twice. "My court is a very small, unimportant one, ronin." The ronin in question refrained from scoffing. Kasuka _was_ a very small holding -- practically microscopic by the standards of the Draconis Combine -- but it was obvious to any who looked that General Daidoji worked very hard to _keep_ his holding small and unimportant. "As much as my superiors would like to ignore those like thee, I cannot. Too many of thine kind turn to theft and banditry, especially in winter, that I find that in the interest of preventing problems in the future I should offer _something_ to thee to reward that integrity." Theodore narrowed his eyes, though he glared at the door rather than turn and let the general see his temper. "Thou have proven thyself capable of courtly courtesy, so I ask thee to set it aside and answer me plainly. For returning the ransom I paid for my son's safety and for facilitating his return to me, what is it thine desire?"

He did not like being patronized. He also did not like the way narrative causality seemed determined to keep him here; on the other hand, the cave my be survivable, but it was an inescapable fact that Theodore was an old man. He could live in the cave, and as an alternative to freezing to death, or swearing allegiance to General Daidoji, he couldn't complain about it, but… could he really afford to pass up an opportunity for a more comfortable place to spend the winter if it didn't come with conditions he'd rather die again than accept?

Not really.

So stripping the mech's armor down to the myomer… Theodore could do Clan-blunt when needed, or asked. "What I want, Daidoji-san, is a place to spend the winter where I will not freeze or starve. I care not if it comes with a duty, or with pay, or with only a hard, cold rock to sleep on, but I will to be free to leave will in the spring. I will accept nothing less."

There was a moment of shocked silence. Apparently that was more blunt than he had expected or desired. Then finally, "Thou are a strange ronin," he said.

"Yes," was all Theodore said in response, because really? What else was there to say? Back home there were a thousand reasons for someone to turn to mercenary work, and many if not most of those mercenaries would not turn from their path even if they were given a choice. Here? Daidoji had seemed to believe that he'd jump at the chance to become a member of a court. To be fair, there were probably still many reasons why a samurai might become ronin, but being a soldier-for-hire was not something to aspire to apparently. 

Actually it wasn't something he'd ever aspired to either -- Legions of Vega notwithstanding -- but it was better than lowering himself to swear fealty to this… this _mayor with delusions of grandeur_. It was arrogance but…

_…I am the Coordinator of Worlds…_

He heard the general pace the room twice more, then sit back down in his chair. "Come back here ronin." Theodore stiffened. "Thou tests my duty and my honor, ronin. If thou wishes a duty to see thee though the winter, I have one for thee."

_Of course_ he did. Because narrative causality.

.  
.

tbc…

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bear sleeps  
> The nightingale leaves  
> The moth dies  
>  \-- a simple 3-5-5 haiku written by me for Theodore here  
> It's not exactly an accurate poem, given that most moth species don't really die during the winter, but "moth larvae overwinter in a pupa that keep them in a near-hibernation state" just refused to fit into a three syllable sentence. And a lot of moth species migrate as well.
> 
> So, uh… yay? Three chapters at once. I've had the cha 9 & 10 written since January, but didn't feel confident about things falling in place in this chapter without rewriting them so I didn't post them. (in my original outline where Theodore lost his fight with the Matsuo this was actually the first meeting between Theodore and General Daidoji and used many of the elements that were used in the actual first meeting earlier in the story; Kurita-san certainly has every reason to curse narrative causality, given how wining that fight only made it more obvious how events were pushing him to this place/time.) Now that this mini-arc is done, things are in place to move onto the next one.


	12. Rokugan 09

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … not stuck this time, only distracted…and i wouldn’t count on me becoming undistracted any time soon…

He was never, ever going to complain about night watch in a battlemech again, should he ever again be in a position to do so. And any under his command was going to spend a night like this: freezing cold, peering through a blizzard, and getting laughed at by the regular infantry.

Okay, so the other guards weren’t _laughing_. They weren’t aware that “night watch” for Theodore had previously meant “perfectly sheltered in a warm multi-ton war machine that could scan for enemies kilometers away thus requiring only a minimum of actual attention”, however his difficulty was obvious to them all. Mostly they assumed his troubles were related to his age. There were those who might have mocked him anyway; Haru-san was one of the (thankfully small, given that Theodore’s presence raised the number of guards to a whopping eleven men) group who’d snickered at Theodore’s difficulties. Braver than his cohorts — a mixed group of armed peasants and minor samurai so distantly related to General Daidoji that they only resided in the keep because the guards were housed in a barracks next to the stables — he’d actually stood to confront Theodore.

He (literally) swallowed whatever words he’d been about to say when the Theodore had looked at him like Haru was a penitent kowtowed before the Coordinator’s thrown and he was considering whether or not to invite him to use the garden as his father would have; instead he’d politely wished Theodore a pleasant watch and hurried away.

The watch, of course, was not pleasant. Two days after Theodore had been officially hired the mild autumn weather had turned unexpected to a blizzard that made using the Mark 1 eyeball a pretty useless endeaver. Not only was the snow blown around violently, causing a complete whiteout, but the wind cut through their haori and other cold-weather clothing like it wasn’t even there putting the watchers in danger of hypothermia.

The guards didn’t relax, but even the most experienced of them seemed content to spend their time between patrolling huddled in the little rooms that dotted the wall, huddled against the cold. Theodore knew he should have taken his cue from them; he didn’t. The snow made him more worried. He knew, consciously, that his companions were right. This world of non-mechanized infantry and cavalry, hand-forged weapons, and supplies carried by wooden-wheeled carts likely couldn’t field any sort of attack during this weather. It wasn’t until the guard commander, Daidoji Akio, came out to where Theodore stood on the wall, huddled into a blanket and oilcloth tarp and startled him out of a listening trance that he realized he was listening for the thundering footsteps of an approaching battlemech rather than watching the tree line for approaching infantry. Blizzards did hamper battlemech combat by reducing the effectiveness of targeting sensors, but the cold increased the efficiency of heatsinks so many commanders, especially in the Lyran Alliance, Free Rasalhague Republic, and some mercenary companies ( _cough_ KellHoundsI _cough_ ), who calculated the two factors as equalling out against the potential of taking the enemy by surprise.

The commander didn’t make issue of Theodore’s strange issue of paranoia and seeming inattentiveness; he just passed the newest recruit a steaming ceramic cup full of fragrant tea. “Arigatou gosaimasu,” Theodore murmured; he didn’t go through the ritual of declining the gift twice, lest it get cold.

Akio didn’t comment on the lapse in protocol; he only huffed in approval. Obviously he was glad he didn’t have to beat the manners out of another wet-behind-the-ears recruit, which would have been awkward for both of them — Theodore was nearly twice Akio-san’s age. They watched the swirling snow in silence for a few moments, Theodore wondering if he was going to be reprimanded for his trance.

“It’s different than being on campaign,” was what he said, when he finally spoke.

What was there to say to that? It was only the truth, even if Akio-san couldn’t know exactly how true it was for Theodore. “Yes it is,” he said, simple inflectionless truth.

The commander nodded. “It’s only the start of winter. Thou should consider coming into the guard house to warm up occasionally.”

It both was and wasn’t a reprimand, and it was again only the truth. “Yes Commander.”

The other samurai nodded and turned, his footsteps blown away by the wind. A neigh sounded and they both stiffened. Theodore shivered violently as he dropped the blankets to work his wakazashi free of its sheath. “Remain at your post,” Akio snapped, as if Theodore would do anything else, before rushing to investigate: the sound had come from outside the front gates, the other side of the compound from Theodore’s station. A moment later the alert bell rang — it was the one Theodore mentally thought of as the Yellow Alert signal rather than the one that indicated they were under immediate attack — and the other guards streamed out of their warm guard rooms to take their positions along the wall.

The wait was nerve-wracking. Hours and hours while the blizzard wailed through the night around them. Neither the alarm bell nor the all-clear signal rang. They could hear the commotion at the gate, which quickly spread through the rest of the compound. Fires that had died down to sleepy coals were prodded to angry wakefulness and candles were lit throughout the keep. Activity buzzed through the buildings as though someone had kicked a beehive. It set all of them on edge, not the least because they were supposed to be watching the forest for potential attacks and only caught the briefest glimpses through the snow of what was going on in the keep.

The other guards speculated as those on patrol passed those peering out into the night with lanterns; Theodore shared what he was hearing easily enough, and listened to the gossip he was told. He heard horses, mostly. Unhappy and distressed horses and the din of people moving and panicked conversations — nothing that those on the back wall with him weren’t also hearing. The patrollers told him that a large procession had been caught in the blizzard and was taking shelter here. The gates had been opened to welcome their guests and there were too many horses for the keep’s stables.

They relaxed somewhat. It explained why the all-clear signal hadn’t been sounded; they needed to be on alert in case some enemy out there took advantage of the commotion.

Still they were starved for information of what the hell was going on, so when a servant ran up the stairway he was practically mobbed by those guards close enough to do so. The servant just shook his head and excused himself, moving along the wall until he reached Theodore. “Sir. The General requests thine presence in his office.”

“Of course.” He followed the servant off the wall and through the narrow hallways and walled paths the servants used to the office, where he was left to wait. A few minutes later, Ir’rik’uk was also led in. He didn’t have any idea of what was going on either. It was another hour before General Daidoji let himself into the building, looking harried and tired.

“Kurita-san,” he said without preamble, too tired for courtly manners, “I’m relieving thee from thine duty on the wall. Thou are my guest and thou will act like it. Wait in the barracks until I send for thee. Ik’rik’uk-san, stay with Kurita-san. The two of thee will attend the opening of Court, but after, I expect thou both to remain out of sight.”

With that they were dismissed, General Daidoji hurrying them out and himself striding away in the manner of the already Way Too Busy to Deal With This Shit.

Outside in the snow Theodore and Ik’rik’uk looked at each other; Theodore shrugged. then led the way to the barracks. The General obviously wanted his two most embarrassing members of his court out of the way.

Rather than allowed to pile onto the bed he’d been assigned when he was hired, Commander Akio directed him to a mat in the corner. “I know the General wants thou here, out of the way, but thou will be assigned new quarters soon and in the meantime I need to find a place to put all the new guards. Get thine things and stay out of the way.”

Fortunately Theodore didn’t have that many things, and most of them had remained packed. He hadn’t exactly needed camping gear while he stayed in the barracks.

Seeing as their help was profoundly not wanted, it was still the middle of the night or very early morning, and without the blankets that were still on the formerly-his bunk it was _freezing_ , the fire unable to keep the space warm with people constantly coming and going, he and Ik’rik’uk (practical creatures they occasionally were) curled up together for warmth and went to sleep. 

.

They were given new quarters in the morning, which was good because as the night had worn on it had become obvious that even the space their mat rested on was going to be needed to house the new guards from the procession.

The General’s wife, Lady Daidoji Kokoro, also with the same air of Too Busy to Deal With This the General had had, showed them to the game room, apologizing that with their new guests there was no other rooms available on the guest floor. Or among the servants, though of course the Lady would not dream of putting two honored guests among mere servants. 

Some shoji screens had been brought in to divide part of the room from the rest, then that into two separate rooms for Theodore and Ik’rik’uk. They were small, little more than a futon, a brazier and a sword rack in Theodore’s for his blades. Ik’rik’uk immediately went to all fours and started sniffing through his new bedding, which caused the Lady to avert her eyes from the unseemly, inhuman behavior. Theodore simply looked over the improvised room and assured the Lady that it would do fine, and that there was no reason for her to use more of her valuable time attending to them. They bowed to each other, and she left, still ignoring Ik’rik’uk.

Theodore was more worried about privacy. He’d already noticed that most of the internal walls of the keep’s buildings were almost all shoji screens. Nothing was private, as he truly defined the word, but at least in the barracks he’d had a lockable box to keep his possessions in. He didn’t have much, but what he had was extremely valuable to him, and this room was only a visual barrier keeping it from the game room, which would be extremely popular over the winter. Not all those who came to entertain themselves would resist the temptation to snoop.

Shrugging he resigned himself to it. There wasn’t anything worth stealing, except the coins he’d earned from the bounty on the bandit ears, which he decided to keep on himself at all times, and his swords, which presumably any snooper would have sense enough to leave alone.

They were left there, alone save for the occasional harried looking servant who rushed in to retrieve or rearrange something in the game room, for three days. Theodore spent the time teaching Ik’rik’uk how to play Go; the Nezumi was surprisingly good at it.

.

.

tbc

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think i finally figured out why I feel compelled to leave notes. Both the narrator and all the characters around him are the “imply it don’t say it” types and so i’m never sure if these things are going to actually come up in the narrative. Since I’m writing this more for myself and for friends that respond to me directly than for the cold vastness of the indifferent internet, I put the notes in so we can follow what’s not being said outright.
> 
> notes: 
> 
> for the not battletech inclined: “to invite (someone) to use the garden” is a euphemism for “command (someone) to commit seppuku”. When Takashi ordered an underling to kill himself he’d often invite the person to use the palace gardens for the ceremony.
> 
> In case it never comes up within Theodore’s POV: The General had several reasons for taking Theodore off the wall. The two most significant both have to do with appearances. First, the story of his son’s rescue is going to get around to his guests and it would not look good for him to have rewarded the ratling with a court position and the samurai (ronin, yes, but still samurai) with guard duty. Yes, it’s what Theodore said he wanted, but that won’t matter to his guests. Maybe if he hadn’t insisted on Theodore staying he could say he’d rewarded the ronin adequately, but with him there he needs to be able to say the reward he got was equal to the one he gave a mere ratling. So he takes the ronin off the wall.
> 
> Second, as a guest Theodore can hopefully stay out of sight out of mind of his guests, while as a wall guard he’d be forced to interact with the procession’s guards (all of which are higher ranked samurai than the general himself — more on that later) as they supplemented the established guards, and General Daidoji would be the one to take any flack for having hired a ronin as guard.


	13. Rokugan 10

Servants woke them far too early in the morning, hauled them through the process of a bath as quickly as was polite and had them hidden away again before more than the night guards could see them. Two of them stayed behind to ensure Theodore and Ik’rik’uk dressed in the kimono they’d hauled away yesterday to be cleaned and repaired — Theodore had insisted on the burial kimono; Ik’rik’uk’s was again pink, though the one he’d arrived in had been beyond repair — then supervised them through breakfast and several games while they waited for whatever they were waiting for to start. Theodore still remembered how to keep his clothes nice while waiting; Ik’rik’uk had to be reminded not to put wrinkles in his.

Of course no amount of bathing or perfumes (which of course Ik’rik’uk vehemently refused; he hadn’t had to refuse much — there wasn’t much, this far from the city, and the servants had looked relieved they wouldn’t be wasting the lady’s best wisteria water on the Nezumi) would get rid of the musky scent of male rat that clung to the Nezumi’s fur. Theodore didn’t exactly find it pleasant, but he’d smelled worse in the Inn. Yes, there really was such a thing as a stink demon.

It was hard, sometimes, to think of his experiences in the Inn as something other than a dream. It’s diversity and timelessness was too strange to be real, and yet, he could not deny the changes in him it had wrought. He had played cards with a table full of demons, including the aforementioned stink demon, and had heeded the warning to be careful with his wagers, but…symbols of sin and vice they nevertheless were part of the universe outside the lifetime of his birth. His own personal river to the Afterlife, and Michifer his ferryman, it had prepared him for the journey, else he never would accepted any aspect of this place, much less the Nezumi.

They were led outside to the garden hall. Or rather, since the garden was crowded full of people, to a spot that was clearly as close as a pair of extremely minor members of an extremely minor court were allowed to get to the proceedings inside. Warriors, both male and female — which was somewhat of a shock to him — studiously ignored the obvious ronin and the Nezumi playing at being a samurai, while courtiers stared out of the corners of their eyes and from behind their fans. Were it just him, Theodore would have stared back, pointedly confronting them with their rudeness, but he wouldn’t taint Ik’rik’uk with that sort of reputation. The Nezumi was going to have enough issues to deal with in a human court. As it was, he kept his hand discreetly on the Nezumi’s arm, simultaneously guiding him to follow the servant and keeping him from wandering off, as that twitching nose so clearly telegraphed his desire to.

Such ceremonies were familiar to Theodore, in general if not this one in specific. Every state in the Inner Sphere had had something similar, and he’d attended probably hundred in the Combine and several as a guest of other states. His job, right now was to keep quiet and keep Ik’rik’uk from wandering off. He made a point to pay attention, though he couldn’t see anything, if only so that those around him wouldn’t note any sort of disrespect. 

He didn’t fancy the thought of being executed for disrespecting the Emperor, after all.

He knew, consciously, that this was a big deal. Comparable to the possibility that a jumpship carrying himself had broken over a two-hundred person colony world without a name and them forced to host the Coordinator until it was fixed. Huge. Monumental. But Theodore’s thoughts completely centered around avoiding notice and staying out of the politics. All he wanted was to survive the winter and eventually find the door back to the Serpent, and getting executed would _severely_ disrupt those plans.

Eventually, as those low-ranked enough that they were stuck outside shivered, the Emperor, who Theodore could not actually _see_ but his voice carried over the crowd like that of a professional actor’s, dismissed the court to their individual dinners and he thanked the gods that communal feasts were apparently not a part of Rokugani court-culture. He didn’t want the higher-ranked samurai who were inside to get a good look at him.

Inevitable there would be rumors circulating before meals were served. Winter had just gotten very, very long for Theodore.

.

.

tbc…

.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I apparently spent months trying to make the court opening into a big deal for Theodore, but it just wasn’t working. Fact was, it wasn’t a big deal for him and he was not going to let me write it as such…


	14. Rokugan 11

As instructed, he stayed out of sight with Ik'rik'uk. He had no desire to be noticed anyway. This was difficult; the keep really wasn't large enough for all the people currently residing in it. It was so crowded that many of the courtiers spent their days in the village, frequenting the inns and sake houses (some of which hadn’t been there when winter began) and the keep was _still_ over crowded with those who wanted to stay near the Emperor. When the weather was nice, the two of them stayed outside in the gardens, hiding. Ik'rik'uk was endlessly interested in exploring the human "warren" and was actually quite good at doing so undetected, and he came back to Theodore to ask questions about what he'd seen when the interactions between humans confused him. Convincing him not to steal various unattended objects had been a bit of a trial, but he'd managed to convince the Nezumi that a good scout left no trace of his passage.

Despite his lack of memory for such things as words (especially written or complicated words) and concepts foreign to him (including _time_ Theodore found; everything in the past was yesterday, while everything in the future was tomorrow, with both yesterday and tomorrow being mostly irrelevant. Theodore found it a strange mindset for a people who called themselves the _Brave Warriors Who Remember_ but apparently history was the domain of the _Rememberers_ , of which Ik'rik'uk was not.), any military unit would have been thrilled to have him for a scout, if they could overcome the fact that he was a giant rat.

While the Nezumi explored and observed, Theodore busied himself with finally taking the time to work on his kimono. The green and brown one he'd taken from Matsuo needed washing, patching and repair, as did his burial kimono. Both would remain in good condition for some time yet, though Matsuo's had required a new hem lining to stop the fraying. He needed a third obi, and though it was blue he thought hard about repairing A'Timitr'D'n'Kir's gift and using it. He'd earned a place here (shamed as his host was to have a ronin underfoot when the emperor had been unexpectedly trapped here) for the winter, but he still had no income; he needed to decided if the blue obi was repairable, or if he needed to spend the money for a new one.

The only thing stopping him was the question of if he'd be dishonoring the gift if he altered it, or not.

"It is a gift-gift to remember his scent," had been Ik'rik'uk's answer when asked. "No-hairs no have strong noses."

It had been a singularly unhelpful an answer. 

So while he pondered the question of the blue obi, he busied himself with threading his name and other identifying marks onto his two newer kimono with the thread scavenged from the bandits' cave. No one in Rokugan would put a black and red dragon on any sort of garment, so Theodore did it himself. His request to the house's servants for a needle and embroidering hoop had been met with furtive questioning looks in return. Embroidery was not one of the arts considered necessary of a samurai, either here or in the Combine, and was generally considered a woman's art. But like sewing and patching, a DCMS soldier often picked it up, if only to stitch his name on garments before they went through the communal wash. The resulting dragons were not perfect, but they served.

He also, after lighting a stick of incense in honor of the dead, added a small, encircled wolf's head in the same red and black to one sleeve of both kimono, though he left his burial kimono without this particular embellishment. He was loathe to alter that one more than absolutely necessary. He had never imagined being both gaijin and ronin. As unorthodox as the Legions of Vega had been, they were still part of the DCMS. For all his conflicts with his father, Takashi had still been his father and Lord, and he'd been his son and samurai. But as long as he was selling his services and collecting bounties to buy rice and shelter, he could think of no better symbol of mercenary honor than Wolf's Dragoons.

It was while he stitched the first of those wolf's heads onto the blue kimono that he was interrupted by someone other than Ik'rik'uk, despite the fact that he was currently seated under a tree and behind a snow-covered hedge that both concealed him from view.

"Thou are thinking heavy thoughts, ronin." Theodore looked up from his uncooperative needlework. This was the third time he'd restitched the circle, it coming out twice before as more of an oval than a circle, and had taken the precaution of drawing the wolf's head on the cloth in charcoal before continuing. "I see them hanging off thine shoulders like fishing weights," the woman was dressed in red and yellow bearing the mon he now knew belonged to the Phoenix clan. 

It grated on Theodore's sensibilities to be the one to stand, bow, and introduce himself first. 

"Isawa Takara," she answered and he turned to gather up his stitching to let her have the garden. "Thou've not answered me, Te-o-do-san. " He stiffened, reminding himself that she meant no insult, as he had every time he'd been addressed since he came here.

"Call me Kurita, please," he said.

She glided closer. "Kurita is not a family of the Empire."

"Think of it as a ronin's name, if you must," he returned as politely as he could, "but the way I've heard my given name mangled since," dying, "becoming ronin is distressing to me."

She hummed thoughtfully as she examined the still-green needles of the strange looking conifer that had sheltered him while he worked. "Such was not my intent."

"I know," he circled her a bit to escape the garden before she took offense at his presence or this conversation. "The sounds are difficult. It's the reason I would prefer to be addressed by my family name."

"Thou has no reason to leave, Kurita-san," she halted his progress to the entrance of the small garden. "I came to speak with thee." He simply waited wishing he'd managed to escape her. He did not know the purpose for which she had sought him out. Most of the guests -- those who had accepted the General's invitation to come and court his daughter over winter court as well as those who were part of the Emperor's entourage and had been trapped here by the storm with him -- had opted to pretend he didn't exist and he had returned the favor. Those whom had acknowledged him he avoided with even more diligence than the rest. He had no wish to be caught up as a disposable pawn of this world's politics. Once upon a distant star, he would have done almost everything to cut himself free of the politics to which he had been born, even as he competed with the various Warlords and politicians for his father's favor and with his father for influence over the empire that would one day be his to rule, and it was frustrating now to be without authority and yet still entangled.

He did not know what she wanted. She would not have been the first to try and net him into one of the various schemes that had popped up like mushrooms in a fairy ring the instant the snows had closed them in. To cut off the most obvious avenues of entrapment, he had let it be known -- both via the servant's rumor mill and directly to anyone who inquired -- that he considered himself to be in the employ of their host. Though the service for which he had been hired had effectively evaporated the minute the Emperor had been unexpectedly snow-locked in this unimaginably tiny keep and politics had shifted to revolve around him rather than the daughter of the lord of a very minor keep, he would not be negotiating _any_ potential contracts until nearly spring. He also would not be accepting any "favors" or "gifts" or even "advice"; such things always came with a price. 

All of which would be difficult to adhere to if the offer came from someone too important, he acknowledged, which was why he had acceded to his host's request that he keep himself to himself.

"I am not accepting offers of employment at this time, Isawa-san," he said politely. 

"I'm not making any," she said distantly, still staring at the pine needles. He was beginning to think she might not be entirely anchored to the same reality he was. Of course _his_ reality included the knowledge of distant stars, great wars on a nearly imaginable scale, and the coils of a serpent disguised as a tavern that connected those things to here so maybe that wasn't a fair observation. "I'm curious what could trouble the mind of a ronin so greatly. Thine thoughts are heavy as any great samurai's, and the weight of worlds lurks in thine every word. Thou moves, and the spirits move with thee though thou does nothing to command or cajole them to service."

"I'm certain I know nothing of what you speak." This woman suddenly reminded him of A'Timitr'D'n'Kir. He had couched his prophecy in language of strength of Name, and had warned him of something 'Tomorrow'. When nothing ominous had manifested the next day, he'd mostly dismissed the words, but he knew more of Nezumi now; A'Timitr'D'n'Kir''s 'Tomorrow' could easily be still yet to come. He wondered if he was going to receive another warning, just in case he hadn't taken the first one to heart.

She smiled, huffed an almost-laugh. "I see thou does not," she looked at him and blinked a long, slow sweep of lashes that didn't disguise how she didn't quite focus on him. "Thus I ask thou of thine thoughts."

"Ah," he answered vaguely, stalling, but then shrugged. This could still be political, but the connection with A'Timitr'D'n'Kir he'd made tempted him to believe otherwise: this was not human politics, but motivated by whatever guided the actions or words of prophets regardless of species. "Nothing important," he still hedged, holding out the embroidery to show her. "I was concentrating only on this."

She examined the stitched circle and charcoal outline without touching it. "A wolf is a strong and honorable symbol for one who has been cast out upon the waves."

She referred to the wolf banner of Toturi's Army, the collection of ronin who had served the Emperor-to-be before he'd so much as thought to claim the throne. He referred to mercenaries of a different mold, but the parallels were undeniable, another undercurrent of symbolism that threatened to send him into a downward spiral of reminiscing on a past that proved time and time again to be not so far in the past, despite being a lifetime and a world behind him.

"Yes it is," was all he said though.

"But it is not thine," she said with certainty. It was not a hard guess to make; while he worked on the embroidery today he wore his burial kimono with the Combine Dragon emblazoned in all its glory. "What is this wolf to thee that the eyes of ghosts and gods follow every stitch?" She lowered herself to a proper sieza position in the cold dry needles beneath the tree. 

He was not sure he liked that she was settling in to listen. "It is a story of ronin, Isawa-san, not a story of proper samurai."

She smiled. "Phoenix has many such stories. Wave men can be heroes as well, fighting for love and for a place in a new clan."

"This will not be one of those stories," he warned as he hesitantly resumed his place under the tree. "This is a story of mercenaries and mercenary honor." She nodded her understanding and he laid out his stitching to buy himself time to think. Not only did this story fail to cast his family in a positive light, but he was also mindful of how small this world was and that he did not wish to cast himself as a gaijin as well as a ronin. He also had no wish to hear other familiar names mangled by a tongue unused english sounds. She waited with every appearance of patience, watching his stitching. He had almost retraced the charcoal outline in black thread before he spoke again; perhaps it was best to present it a more of a fairytale than the true story it was. "Once upon time, to a war ravaged five kingdoms came a mercenary-king from beyond their borders…"

And so, in story, Jaime Wolf became _Yohei-sama_ , whose soldiers possessed the speed and teeth of wolves; Natasha Kerensky became _Lady Kumo_ , who, in addition to the wolf-skin powers of her leader, possessed her own unique spider bites. Cautious of the Clan (and _Clan_ ) symbolism and how it overlapped strangely with the various animal symbols and nicknames of those from his home stars, he was careful to be specific. Rather than just calling the Coordinator the Dragon as he might have before, he called his father the _Black Dragon_ , giving the symbol a sinister foreshadowing. He called Grieg Samsonov the _Hungry Ghost_ and Minobu Tetsuhara _Tomodachi-sama_ , the most honored friend _._ Fairytale names for fairytale characters.

He told the story of Yohei-sama, the powerful mercenary whose supernatural wolf-powers helped him defeat those he was hired to fight, but were sometimes little help in evading the tricks and traps of his employers. Instead Yohei-sama and his pack used his cleverness and contracts to wiggle away from every animal-Lord who tried to trap him. He told some of the most outrageous rumors that had circulated around Wolf's Dragoons as fairytale truths. Yohei-sama and his brother were nursed on the milk of a she-wolf and grew strong running with their wolf-mother's pups. Lady Kumo charged into battle clothed only in courage and wolf-skin as Natasha had been rumored to go nude in the cockpit of her battlemech (a rumor he did know was an untruth). Dressed in their wolf-skins, Yohei-sama's pack could fire a volley of arrows of fire over the horizon, and there did not exist a better archer than the Mercenary King himself (as Jaime had once piloted an _Archer_ ). They could flatten a forest with a gesture, and the most well-forged katana could no more scratch their skins than one could hold a distant star in one's hand. Nothing was too much for the heroes of the tale.

He told the story of Yohei-sama's employment to the Black Dragon as a tale of shame. Yohei-sama, as the hero of the fairytale was a creature of honor, professionalism and integrity, while the Black Dragon and the Hungry Ghost, the villains, followed Bushido and shamed themselves in the doing, condemning Tomodachit-sama to seppuku for their pride.

He ignored the long years between the beginning of his father's feud with Jaime Wolf and its end and wrapped up the tale not with a heroic battle, but with betrayal and the Black Dragon's seppuku on the eve of the anticipated vengeance.

Isawa Takara listened patiently. Theodore was surprised. He had his own conflicts regarding the whole sordid history, but believed the mistakes had been made on both sides (most especially by himself); to give power to the tale, though, he'd erased the shades of grey and done his best to tell as story wholly from the point of view of the mercenaries, assuming that they were in the right. In the process, the tale vilified the followers of Bushido as treacherous, dishonest, boorish, prideful and of dangerously flexible honor. And he'd watched Isawa's face twist in a sort of confused approval-disgust as each Bushido-correct action was twisted into a thing to be ashamed of, but she listened without interrupting.

She stayed silent for a long moment after he'd finished. During the tale, he'd finished filling in the black wolf's head and had switched to red thread to fill in the circle around it. He did not look up from his work to see her reaction to his tale. It was probably disgust honestly, but she'd asked why he was adding the wolf's head to his kimono, in addition to his own black dragon.

She surprised him though, when she finally spoke. "Yohei-sama represents the highest ideals of those ronin who would never choose to rejoin a proper family and Clan. Thou will wear his mon beside thine own to declare that thou also will hold to these values now that thou have found yourself tossed upon the waves."

"Yes," he answered simply.

"But thou did not choose this path yourself." He shook his head. "And despite that thou will follow Yohei-sama's example and forgo any offer of joining a family or Clan." It wasn't a question, so Theodore didn't answer. Isawa looked thoughtful. "I do not wish to offend in any manner, but that contradiction makes me curious. How did thou become ronin, Kurita-san?"

"I died," the answer was as flat and borderline hostile as when he'd admitted the same to Junichiro. He could have lied. To these people around him, this wasn't an afterlife but their living existence, but why should he? He was lying about enough to conceal that which their archaic version of the language didn't even have _words for_. At least in this one thing he could be honest about how much he _wasn't one of them_.

She finally, for the first time since intruding on his private spot in the garden, looked directly and focused on him with an intensity that was a bit unnerving. "Of course thou did."

.

.

tbc…

 


End file.
